MIAMI - Federal prosecutors in Miami have moved to strip U.S. citizenship from at least four people this year, making South Florida an early testing ground for the Trump administration's push to sharply expand denaturalization cases against foreign-born Americans.
The cases, reported by the Miami Herald after a review of court records and public statements, come as the Justice Department has instructed its Civil Division to "prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence." The directive was included in a June 11, 2025, memo signed by Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate.
Historically, the government has used denaturalization, the civil process used to revoke citizenship from someone who became a U.S. citizen through naturalization, in rare cases involving Nazi collaborators, war criminals, spies, or people accused of concealing serious misconduct during the citizenship process. Between 1990 and 2017, the Justice Department pursued an average of 11 denaturalization cases a year, according to figures cited by the Herald.
The new memo widens the government's priority list.
It names cases involving terrorism, espionage, war crimes, human rights abuses, gangs, drug cartels, sex offenses, violent crimes, financial fraud, and felonies that were not disclosed during the naturalization process. It also says the list does not limit the Civil Division from pursuing other cases it considers important.
That language has alarmed immigration lawyers and civil liberties advocates because it appears to move beyond the traditional focus on fraud or misconduct before naturalization. According to the Herald, the memo also points to people convicted of crimes after becoming citizens, which attorneys describe as a largely untested legal frontier.
Steven Goldstein, a Miami immigration attorney and former federal prosecutor with the old Immigration and Naturalization Service, told the Herald that denaturalization law was traditionally aimed at people who committed an unlawful act before becoming citizens, especially if they hid it during the application process. "What appears to be happening now is an effort to broaden the law's scope," Goldstein said, describing the policy as targeting conduct "at any point after naturalization."
The Justice Department has defended the approach as an effort to protect the integrity of the naturalization system and remove citizenship from people who obtained it unlawfully. The June memo says denaturalization can be used against people who "illegally procured" citizenship or obtained it through "concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation," language drawn from federal law.
In Miami, the cases include Philippe Bien-Aime, the former mayor of North Miami, whom the federal government accused of using two identities, lying about his marriages and falsifying records to obtain immigration benefits and citizenship. Prosecutors also pursued a Peruvian-born man accused of failing to disclose prior military service before later facing allegations in Peru tied to extrajudicial killings, and a Cuban-born woman whose citizenship was stripped over a 2019 health care fraud conviction, according to the Herald.
The expansion is especially sensitive in Miami-Dade County, where more than half the population is foreign-born. For many immigrants, citizenship has long represented the final legal protection after years of visas, green cards, and background checks. The idea that it can be reopened years later has created fear, even though experts say most naturalized Americans are unlikely to face denaturalization.
"The average citizen is not going to be targeted by this and is not under serious threat," David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told the Herald. "There's a high bar for the government to take away someone's citizenship." Bier added that the process is procedurally complicated and resource-intensive.
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