Jaclyn Diaz and Juliana Kim for NPR (a news organization that stands to lose its federal funding for “unfairly” reporting stories like this):

The Justice Department is aggressively prioritizing efforts to strip some Americans of their U.S. citizenship.

Department leadership is directing its attorneys to prioritize denaturalization in cases involving naturalized citizens who commit certain crimes—and giving U.S. attorneys wider discretion on when to pursue this tactic, according to a June 11 memo published online. The move is aimed at U.S. citizens who were not born in the country; according to data from 2023, close to 25 million immigrants were naturalized citizens.

At least one person has already been denaturalized in recent weeks. On June 13, a judge ordered the revocation of the citizenship of Elliott Duke, who uses they/them pronouns. Duke is an American military veteran originally from the U.K. who was convicted for distributing child sexual abuse material—something they later admitted they were doing prior to becoming a U.S. citizen.

It’s not difficult to see where this ends.

First, use an admitted child pornographer as a test case—few will defend the “indefensible.” The “American military veteran” part might give brief pause, but using they/them pronouns eclipses veteran status for this regime.

Next, declare any crime—right down to parking tickets and jaywalking—as a reason to denaturalize. You so much as drop a tissue on the street and you’ll be rounded up.

Finally, strip citizenship at will. Any reason will do. Membership in a terrorist organization—say, the Democratic Party, a mosque, or merely anti-Trump protesters—will be a leading contender, at least until they get to “because we felt like it.”

The DOJ memo says that the federal government will pursue denaturalization cases via civil litigation—an especially concerning move, said Cassandra Robertson, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University.

In civil proceedings, any individual subject to denaturalization is not entitled to an attorney, Robertson said; there is also a lower burden of proof for the government to reach, and it is far easier and faster to reach a conclusion in these cases.

Robertson says that stripping Americans of citizenship through civil litigation violates due process and infringes on the rights guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.

Presuming protection of the law is folly, because capriciousness isn’t a legal doctrine. Laws only matter when equally enforced—otherwise it’s just a whim.