Citizenship Shake-Up Explodes

A sweeping “Remigration Act” from Rep. Andy Ogles aims to crack down on fraud and birthright citizenship abuses while defending the meaning of American citizenship.

Story Snapshot

Rep. Andy Ogles’ Remigration Act links denaturalization to serious fraud and felony convictions.
Trump’s Justice Department has made revoking citizenship for fraud a top enforcement priority.
The bill also targets birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants, echoing Trump’s executive order.
Civil-rights groups warn the campaign could erode due process and create “second-class” citizens.

Ogles’ Remigration Act: What It Would Do

Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles has introduced the Remigration Act, a broad immigration bill that speaks directly to longtime conservative concerns about fraud, chain migration, and birthright citizenship. The draft would revoke naturalized citizenship for people convicted of aggravated felonies, government-benefits fraud, certain federal crimes, or providing material support to foreign terrorist groups within ten years of becoming citizens. It would also end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants and force a full review of asylum and refugee approvals granted under the Biden administration.

The Remigration Act goes beyond criminal penalties and reaches into future immigration rules. It would create a Department of Homeland Security task force to re-check every asylum grant, refugee admission, and status adjustment made between January 20, 2021, and January 20, 2025. The bill also raises the English standard for naturalization, replacing today’s basic reading and speaking test with a “functional literacy” requirement measured by a formal exam. Supporters say this helps ensure new citizens can fully join American civic life and are not simply gaming the system.

Trump’s Denaturalization Push and DOJ Priorities

The Remigration Act fits inside a larger Trump-era push to defend the “meaning and value” of American citizenship and crack down on people who lied their way into the country. On June 11, 2025, the Department of Justice Civil Division issued an internal memo making denaturalization one of its top five enforcement priorities and directing attorneys to “prioritize and maximally pursue” such cases whenever the evidence allows. That memo expanded focus from rare, extreme cases to a wider set of fraud and misrepresentation allegations tied to naturalization.

President Trump has also said clearly that his administration will revoke citizenship from naturalized immigrants convicted of defrauding Americans. The Justice Department followed through in headline cases such as Emmanuel Oluwatosin Kazeem, accused of masterminding a multimillion-dollar identity theft and tax fraud scheme and now facing a civil denaturalization complaint in federal court. Historically, denaturalization averaged only about 11 cases per year from 1990 to 2017, used mainly against war criminals or terrorists, but the government has recently built more capacity for this tool. This marks a real shift toward treating citizenship fraud as a serious national concern rather than a minor paperwork issue.

Birthright Citizenship Under Fire

Alongside fraud, many conservatives see birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants as a magnet for border abuse and “anchor baby” schemes. On his first day of the second term, President Trump signed Executive Order 14160, directing agencies not to issue citizenship documents to children born in the United States when the mother was unlawfully present or only here temporarily and the father was not a citizen or lawful permanent resident. The order applies prospectively and aims to stop new automatic citizenship claims based on a single U.S. birth.

Legal experts from institutions like Harvard Law School argue that the Fourteenth Amendment is clear: anyone born on American soil, and subject to U.S. jurisdiction, is a citizen, no matter their parents’ status. They say a president has no authority to narrow that rule and that only a constitutional amendment could change the minimum guarantee. This is why figures such as Congressman Andy Barr have proposed an amendment to end birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants, trying to settle the issue at the constitutional level instead of relying on executive orders that will face heavy court challenges. Supporters see this as necessary to protect sovereignty; critics view it as an attack on long-standing rights.

Court Limits, Civil Liberties Fears, and the Fraud Standard

Even while backing tougher rules against fraud, the Supreme Court has placed guardrails on how far denaturalization can go. In Maslenjak v. United States, decided in 2017, the Court held that misrepresentation must be “material” to the grant of citizenship — meaning the lie or concealment actually helped the person become a citizen. A trivial mistake on a form should not cost someone their passport and their home. That standard forces the government to prove a direct link between the fraud and the naturalization, not just point to any wrongdoing in a person’s life.

Civil-rights and immigration advocacy groups warn that the new denaturalization push, especially in civil cases, risks eroding due process and turning naturalized Americans into “second-class citizens.” They point out that civil denaturalization suits do not provide court-appointed lawyers and use a lower burden of proof than criminal trials. Fact sheets and policy briefs argue that denaturalization is being used in “unprecedented ways,” sometimes for relatively minor infractions, and that large-scale reviews of hundreds of thousands of files can create fear among law-abiding immigrants. These groups frame the Remigration Act and related policies as government overreach, while supporters respond that strong tools are needed to protect citizens from fraud, terrorism, and organized crime.