Can my U.S. citizenship be taken away (denaturalization)?

Naturalization is presumed permanent — once a person takes the oath of allegiance, they have all the rights of a born U.S. citizen. But under INA § 340, the federal government may revoke naturalization if it was illegally procured or procured by concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation. The case is litigated as a civil action in federal district court (in most cases) and the burden of proof is on the government.

What triggers denaturalization referrals

1. Concealment of a disqualifying arrest or conviction — the most common trigger. If the applicant answered "no" to the arrest question on the N-400 while a disqualifying offense existed, and would not have been approved had USCIS known, that is the textbook case.
2. Concealment of identity — false names, false birthdates, false places of birth on prior immigration filings.
3. Membership in a totalitarian, terrorist, or genocidal organization during the GMC period.
4. Continuous-residence misrepresentation — claiming continuous U.S. residence when CBP records show otherwise.
5. Marriage fraud — naturalization based on a marriage-based green card that was not bona fide.

The Supreme Court's materiality limit

In Maslenjak v. United States, 137 S. Ct. 1918 (2017), the Court held that an immaterial misrepresentation cannot support denaturalization. The misrepresentation must have made a difference — either disqualifying the applicant or shutting down a line of inquiry USCIS would otherwise have pursued. This is a meaningful narrowing, but the government routinely meets the materiality standard with documentary cases.

What you have if a case is filed

• Right to counsel (though no right to appointed counsel — civil case).
• Right to a jury trial in some procedural postures.
• Right to challenge the underlying claim that the misrepresentation was material.
• Right to appeal to the federal court of appeals if revocation is ordered.

If denaturalization is ordered, the person reverts to their pre-naturalization status — typically lawful permanent resident, but in concealment cases the LPR status itself may be voided, opening the door to removal proceedings.

The 2026 enforcement posture

DOJ's Office of Immigration Litigation operates an active denaturalization unit that has expanded significantly since 2018. Referrals are running at 5–10× the pre-2018 baseline. The unit's enforcement criteria emphasize terrorism, war crimes, sex offenders, and serial immigration-fraud actors — but the data mining that surfaces cases is broader, pulling on old N-400 records, FOIA mismatches, and CBP travel data.

How we handle this

Defense of a denaturalization case starts the day the summons and complaint arrive (or, even earlier, the day a USCIS notice of intent to denaturalize issues). The first move is securing the entire A-file — every form ever filed, every interview transcript, every officer note. The defense usually turns on (a) whether the alleged misrepresentation was material under Maslenjak, (b) whether the conduct alleged actually occurred, and (c) whether the underlying disqualification was waivable at the time. We have successfully defended cases by proving the supposedly concealed arrest never resulted in a conviction that would have changed the outcome.