The Trump administration and its supporters have made numerous threats to revoke the citizenship of political foes who are naturalized citizens. But if the government tries to follow through, it will have an uphill legal battle.....

Under the law today, the government may seek denaturalization proceedings either when naturalization is obtained illegally or disqualifying facts on citizenship applications are concealed. But throughout much of the 20th century, it was much easier to achieve.....

A few years later, the Supreme Court warned against using denaturalization proceedings as a political weapon. “Ill-tempered expressions, extreme views, even the promotion of ideas which run counter to our American ideals, are not to be given disloyal connotations in absence of solid, convincing evidence that that is their significance,” the Court’s majority wrote. “Any other course would run counter to our traditions, and make denaturalization proceedings the ready instrument for political persecutions.”

In 1967, the Court found that under the 14th Amendment, the government cannot forcibly deprive a naturalized American of citizenship without the citizen’s consent, except when citizenship is “unlawfully procured.”

In the succeeding decades, denaturalizations declined significantly. Between 1990 and 2017, the Justice Department filed an average of just 11 cases per year. Only during the Obama administration did they climb, when new technology allowed the government to search decades of data for indicators of possible fraud. In 2016, the yearly average rose to 15. During the first Trump administration, the program expanded, increasing the average to 25 per year.....

The second Trump administration is picking up where the last one left off, filing at least 25 cases in the first 10 months of 2025. Based on publicly available information, these cases are not obviously aimed at political viewpoints. But any attempt to use denaturalization as a political weapon will run into significant legal hurdles. The Supreme Court’s firmly established limits on the process are not only robust, but also deeply rooted in protections guaranteed by the 1st and 14th Amendments.