Can President Trump Strip Citizenship? Yes and No

All presidents, using the immigration agencies under their control, are legally able to strip people of citizenship.

This concept applies to naturalized citizens: People born in another nation who have undergone a lengthy and rigorous legal process to become a citizen. This happens only rarely: to people who falsify immigration documents, or participate as members in subversive or terror groups, or have a dishonorable discharge.

But at no time has a birthright citizen had his or her citizenship stripped. President Trump appears to be interested in making that happen.

Who could lose their citizenship?

That’s a disturbing question—and it’s wide open.

A narrow order would strip citizenship to people born within nine months of their mother’s illegal entry to the U.S.

A broader order would apply to 700,000 registered DACA recipients and more than one million unregistered DACA recipients, many of whom are now in their 20s. Recall, their parents brought them to the U.S. unlawfully when they were children. Under birthright citizenship, their children are automatically U.S. citizens. Given the president’s recent efforts to strip DACA recipients of legal protection from deportation, it is reasonable to assume that his order would target their children as people to lose citizenship.

President Trump might have an even broader concept in mind. Roughly three million people work in the U.S. on visas. Some workers have children who are born in the U.S. (typically, H-1B visa holders who work in the U.S. for many years). Those children are citizens. But the president might seek to draw an order that strips them of citizenship.

What are the consequences of losing citizenship? A person cannot vote in federal and most local elections unless they are a citizen.

But the bigger consequence is deportation. The question for many people who are born in the U.S. and stripped of citizenship by this new order would be: Deported to where?

Consider DACA recipients, now in their 20s or early 30s who came to the U.S. as young children from Mexico, Honduras, Nicaraugua, El Salvador and other nations. The children of DACA recipients have no legal connection to these nations, who would regard these children as aliens with no rights of admission.

What then? We had a situation with an alien who was naturalized (not a birthright citizen), accused of Communist sympathies, stripped of his citizenship, and deported— but no nation would allow him entry, so he was returned to Ellis Island, where he resided indefinitely. A justice in that case wrote (Shaughnessy v. United States ex rel. Mezei, 345 U.S. 206 (1953)):

“Because [Mr. Mezei] has no right of entry, does it follow that he has no rights at all? Does the power to exclude mean that exclusion may be continued or effectuated by any means which happen to seem appropriate to the authorities? It would effectuate his exclusion to eject him bodily into the sea or to set him adrift in a rowboat. Would not such measures be condemned judicially as a deprivation of life without due process of law?”