Denaturalization is the legal process of stripping citizenship rights from naturalized American citizens. According to the ACLU, the Trump Administration has moved to expand the power and scope of the federal government’s denaturalization efforts. President Trump has established a special Denaturalization Office within the Justice Department and has requested an additional $200 million for ICE, specifically to pursue more denaturalization cases.

In the past, this legal process was rarely used and reserved for select situations. For example, several former-Nazi war criminals, who had used false identities to become naturalized American citizens and escape prosecution after World War II, have since had their citizenship rights revoked.

However, the Trump Administration has argued in court (Maslenjak v. United States) that they have the power to denaturalize citizens who lied to the government in any way, during any part of their naturalization process. They explicitly argued in that case that even if the lie (or omission) didn’t actually help someone attain citizenship, they can still be denaturalized and deported.

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Well, that might be a problem for Melania Trump. The Associated Press reported in 2016 that Melania earned over $20,000 performing modeling work during the fall of 1996 before she obtained her work visa. Uh oh. That’s fraud.

And according to the Trump Administration, it is grounds for denaturalization and deportation. So, I’ll just quote some of Donald Trump’s supporters: “Send her back.”

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Joe Townsend

Steamboat Springs