Donald Trump waits for the arrival of Prime Minister of Australia Anthony Albanese at the White House on October 20, 2025. The Trump administration’s new policies make it harder to become a U.S. citizen and easier to denaturalize people who already are citizens. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
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The Trump administration has implemented immigration policies making U.S. citizenship harder to acquire and easier to revoke. Advocates believe the administration hopes to discourage people from applying for citizenship by stripping citizenship from individuals in high numbers and through other actions. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has made the civics test harder to pass, denied applications at a higher rate and proposed increasing the cost of applying for citizenship. The policies align with other administration efforts to restrict immigration.
An Immigration Directive To Increase Denaturalization
In June 2025, Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate issued a memo listing “prioritizing denaturalization” as one of the Department of Justice’s top five priorities. “The Department of Justice may institute civil proceedings to revoke a person’s United States citizenship if an individual either ‘illegally procured’ naturalization or procured naturalization by ‘concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation,’” according to the Justice Department memo.
Setting quotas for law enforcement remains controversial, but, according to the New York Times, the administration’s guidance issued to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field offices asks them to “supply Office of Immigration Litigation with 100-200 denaturalization cases per month” in FY 2026. TRAC reports, “While historically the federal government brought an average of less than 1 denaturalization civil lawsuit per month (or just 0.6), at least 15 denaturalization complaints were filed in May 2026.”
People with criminal convictions face the greatest risk of denaturalization. “If you get convicted of a crime after you have naturalized, and the facts supporting the indictment or charges go back before you naturalized, that would be grounds to denaturalize the person for either failure to maintain good moral character within the relevant five-year period or for not truthfully answering the question on the N-400 on whether you committed a crime for which you were not charged or arrested,” said immigration attorney Cyrus Mehta in an interview.
The Trump administration has not attempted to strip citizenship in employment-based immigration cases. “I still have not seen the Trump administration try to denaturalize citizens for what they may perceive as irregularities in the labor certification process such as not conducting a good faith test of the labor market or where the business necessity justification may not have been present,” said Mehta. “This is because the government has a heavy burden. In Maslenjak v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the federal government cannot strip a naturalized citizen of their U.S. citizenship for making a false statement unless the lie directly influenced the procurement of that citizenship.”
Immigration Agency Raising Fees And Denying More Naturalization Applications
The Trump administration has proposed significantly higher fees for individuals seeking naturalization. Under a proposed rule published in June 2026, the fee to apply online for naturalization will increase by 75%, from $710 to $1,280, and by 80%, from $760 to $1,330, for a paper filing. The proposed rule also ends hardship waivers and reduced fees for low-income applicants. It raises the filing fee for Form N-336, which requests a hearing on a decision in a naturalization proceeding, by 78% to 83%, depending on whether the filing is online or on paper.
USCIS introduced a new civics test in 2025. Individuals filing Form N-400 on or after October 20, 2025, would need to answer correctly 12 of (up to) 20 questions from an increased pool of 128 questions, compared to 6 of 10 questions from a pool of 100 questions under the prior test.
The denial rates for naturalization have more than doubled under Trump. According to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis, the denial rate for Form N-400 increased from 8.3% to 18.1% between May 2024 and May 2026. The denial rate for naturalization rose from 9.2% in September 2025 to 13.1% by January 2026 and reached 18.2% in April 2026.
Whether higher denial rates for naturalization are linked to the new civics test for applicants filing on or after October 2o is not known, given the lag time between filing an application and scheduling the test is typically several months. Individuals who fail a civics test can schedule a second attempt, usually in 60 to 90 days. A successful retest would not be recorded as a denial.
USCIS is processing far fewer naturalization applications each month under the Trump administration than in the Biden years. The number of naturalization applications processed fell by 75% (from 83,317 to 20,795) between May 2024 and May 2026, according to an NFAP analysis.
The naturalization backlog has grown significantly even though fewer people are applying for naturalization. Between January and May 2026, USCIS received an average of approximately 47,500 N-400 forms, compared to about 89,350 for January to May 2024, a drop of nearly half. However, the number of N-400 forms pending for over six months has more than doubled from 198,235 to 441,362 between January and May 2026.
USCIS has defended the changes to naturalization, including employing controversial “neighborhood” investigations. “Naturalization is a privilege, and the new test reinforces the integrity of the naturalization process by ensuring that new citizens understand the rights and responsibilities that come with this privilege,” according to a December 2025 press release. “Pursuant to long-neglected statutory authority, USCIS also restored the practice of conducting neighborhood investigations of potential new citizens. The purpose of a neighborhood investigation is to verify aliens’ eligibility for naturalization by reviewing their residency, moral character, loyalty to the U.S. Constitution and commitment to the nation’s well-being.”
Attorneys and advocates for immigrants remain concerned about the impact of the administration’s naturalization and denaturalization policies. “Recent proposed and finalized policy changes to the naturalization process adds significant hurdles for lawful permanent residents seeking to fully embrace America by obtaining U.S. citizenship,” said Jennie Murray, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum, in a statement. “Concerningly, they are seeking to raise application fees and introduce mechanisms that could enable discretionary denials of citizenship, potentially undermining the fairness, transparency and integrity of the naturalization system. Implementing these changes will likely result in fewer applications, longer processing times and further delays for applicants.”
“A targeted campaign to strip people of citizenship threatens to erode public confidence in the stability of their citizenship status,” according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “By casting doubt on the finality of naturalization, the Administration discourages eligible individuals from pursuing the process and dissuades citizens from fully engaging in civic life. Over time, this erosion of trust will weaken democratic participation and democracy.”