President Trump’s Justice Department just launched a citizenship crackdown on a scale Attorney General Todd Blanche says the country has not seen in modern history.
The department announced Monday that it filed civil denaturalization actions against 40 people accused of hiding serious crimes, fraudulent identities, sham marriages and even work for foreign governments while obtaining U.S. citizenship.
The complaints were filed in federal courts across the country between August 21 and October 2. The cases stretch from California and Texas to Florida, Virginia, New York and Pennsylvania.
The Justice Department has filed denaturalization actions in multiple U.S. district courts against 40 individuals accused of SERIOUS OFFENSES, including:
Acting as an agent for a foreign government
Committing voluntary manslaughter
Aggravated sodomy against a… pic.twitter.com/thumYSFzcU
— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) October 5, 2026
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, federal law allows a court to revoke naturalized citizenship when it was illegally procured or obtained through concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation.
That distinction matters. The government is not claiming it can cancel the citizenship of any naturalized American simply because that person later committed a crime.
The core allegation in these cases is that the defendants were never lawfully entitled to naturalization because they concealed disqualifying conduct, lied during the process or built their immigration history on fraud.
“Today’s announcement marks the largest denaturalization effort in modern history,” Blanche said. He pointed specifically to a convicted spy and people convicted of sexual offenses against minors, saying the administration would continue using denaturalization to protect national security and the American people.
Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate was even more direct: the department alleges that every person named in the new batch “lied their way into U.S. citizenship.”
The most alarming case on the list may be that of former Navy sailor Jinchao Wei.
DOJ says Wei, a native of China, enlisted in the Navy in 2021 and began conspiring to sell American military secrets to a Chinese intelligence officer in February 2022. He naturalized just three months later through a law designed to speed citizenship for people serving honorably in the U.S. military.
Sep 30: the Department of Justice filed a case in the Southern District of California seeking the denaturalization of Jinchao Wei because he conducted espionage on behalf of thegovernment.https://t.co/CBdXLxz3dP https://t.co/4pyZFtlEaX pic.twitter.com/oGnczylBYT
— Byron Wan (@Byron_Wan) October 5, 2026
A federal jury convicted Wei in August 2025 of conspiracy to commit espionage, espionage and illegally exporting technical data related to defense articles.
The Justice Department’s sentencing account says he sold national-defense information about the USS Essex to a Chinese intelligence officer for $12,000. He was sentenced to 200 months in prison and discharged from the Navy.
The new civil complaint alleges that Wei hid the scheme while taking the oath and therefore procured citizenship illegally and through material misrepresentation. It also alleges that he did not satisfy the honorable-service condition of his expedited naturalization.
Another national-security case targets Ping Li, a naturalized citizen living in Florida.
Federal prosecutors say Li worked at the direction of officers from China’s Ministry of State Security for more than a decade. The information he gathered allegedly concerned Chinese dissidents, pro-democracy advocates, Falun Gong practitioners, U.S.-based organizations and sensitive material from two major employers.
Li pleaded guilty in 2024 to conspiring to act as an agent of the Chinese government without notifying the attorney general. A Middle District of Florida summary says he received a 48-month prison sentence, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release.
The other cases show just how wide the new push extends.
One complaint involves a woman convicted of voluntary manslaughter who allegedly concealed her role in a killing committed before she naturalized. Another seeks to revoke the citizenship of a man convicted of possessing child pornography after investigators found that his illegal conduct began years before he became a citizen.
Additional complaints allege sexual abuse of minors, aggravated sodomy against a special-needs man, health-care fraud, money laundering, passport fraud, identity theft and fraudulent marriages used to obtain immigration benefits.
In one extraordinary identity-fraud case, DOJ alleges that an Afghan-born man spent nearly 30 years using another person’s identity to obtain a chain of immigration benefits that ultimately ended in citizenship.
The filings put every naturalized citizen who hid disqualifying conduct on notice: DOJ is reopening the record and taking those cases to court.
But the legal process is only beginning. These are civil complaints, and DOJ expressly says the claims remain allegations with no determination of liability.
The government will still have to prove each case in court before a judge can revoke anyone’s citizenship.
That safeguard is important. So is the principle the administration is enforcing: American citizenship is precious, and people who secured it by hiding espionage, violent crime, sexual abuse or calculated fraud should not get to keep the benefit of the lie.
Forty cases in six weeks is not a paperwork exercise. It is a warning shot—and under Trump’s DOJ, officials are making clear that this effort is only accelerating.
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.
The post Trump DOJ Moves To Strip Citizenship From 40 Accused Criminals In Historic Crackdown appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.
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