The Transfer

USCIS — the agency that handles legal immigration — is temporarily transferring its own lawyers into U.S. Attorney offices to prosecute denaturalization cases, according to four former agency officials who spoke to Axios. The Independent and AOL News independently confirmed the transfers with USCIS officials.

The Numbers

The DOJ has filed 35 denaturalization cases since Trump's second term began — 12 of those in the current month alone, according to a DOJ spokesperson cited by Axios.

The department has also shortlisted 385 people for potential denaturalization charges, per an April New York Times report.

For context: the DOJ filed just over 300 total cases between 1990 and 2017 — the entire prior 27-year span. Current filing rates could exceed that total in a single year.

The Voluntary Question

The lawyers being transferred did not all volunteer. One source told Axios the staffers were being "volun-told" to move offices. Another described the process as lawyers "being force volunteered." A third source confirmed that prior denaturalization or trial experience is not required — just an active law license.

USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler told The Independent: "We are proud to support this critical effort by providing the Department of Justice with a team of our most skilled immigration law attorneys."

But "most skilled" and "no experience required" are contradictory statements.

The June Memo

A June 2025 Justice Department memo officially listed denaturalization as a top administration priority. According to The Independent, the memo said pursuing such cases "supports the overall integrity of the naturalization program."

The memo outlined targets: people who "pose a potential danger to national security" or who obtained citizenship through "material misrepresentations." It also added a provision allowing lawyers to pursue denaturalization in "any other cases" officials believe are "sufficiently important to pursue."

"Sufficiently important" is not a legal standard. It provides discretion with few guardrails.

The Legal Barrier

Denaturalization is difficult to prosecute. In civil cases, the government must prove its claim with "clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence which does not leave the issue in doubt," according to Axios's reporting. One former official told Axios: "[D]enats have never really taken off... it's really hard to prove, the standard is really high, and you need good evidence."

USCIS chief Joe Edlow acknowledged at a Center for Immigration Studies event last September that cases identified during Trump's first term were "still kicking around." The first term created a dedicated team of 10 to 15 lawyers for this work and produced minimal results.

Scaling up with lawyers lacking relevant experience presents a challenge: generating cases that survive federal court scrutiny.

Coverage Gaps

The New York Times has framed this as part of a broad crackdown on legal immigration. Breitbart reported the story largely from the administration's perspective without interrogating the "volun-told" details or the lack of experience requirement. The Independent provided more thorough reporting — naming USCIS officials, surfacing internal friction, and noting the catch-all language in the June memo.

The Background

In 2016, an internal watchdog found that 315,000 old fingerprint records for immigrants who had been deported or had criminal convictions had never been uploaded to the DHS database used during citizenship checks. That same report found more than 800 immigrants had been ordered deported under one identity and became citizens under another.

Addressing such cases is a legitimate government interest. Whether a fast-tracked legal push actually fixes the problem or generates cases unable to meet the evidentiary standard required is an open question.

The Scale

There are roughly 25 million naturalized citizens in the United States, according to The Independent. The vast majority followed the required procedures.

The administration says it is targeting criminals and fraud cases. If strictly applied, the legal standard should determine outcomes. The memo's "any other cases" language, the lack of required expertise among transferred lawyers, and the internal resistance inside USCIS remain questions.

Courts will determine whether cases filed at this pace can meet the burden of proof required by law.