How fraud charges can affect your citizenship
November 20, 2025
In recent months, the U.S. Department of Justice has quietly expanded its efforts to strip U.S. citizenship from naturalized citizens under a policy known as denaturalization. Once a rare and extreme action reserved for war criminals or those who obtained citizenship through major fraud, denaturalization is now being applied in ways that could affect ordinary immigrants — even doctors and low-income individuals accused of financial crimes.
What Is Denaturalization?
Denaturalization is the legal process through which the U.S. government revokes a person’s citizenship after it was granted. Once denaturalized, a person can lose all the rights of a U.S. citizen — including the right to vote, obtain a U.S. passport, and even remain in the country.
Historically, denaturalization cases were limited to individuals who committed very serious crimes, such as war crimes, genocide, or acts of terrorism. These were extreme, rare, and targeted cases.
However, under a June 11, 2025 memo from the Department of Justice, the government has outlined 10 new enforcement categories for denaturalization — one of which includes financial crimes against the United States, such as Medicaid and Medicare fraud.
Medicaid and Medicare Fraud as a Denaturalization Ground
The new policy expands the scope of denaturalization to include naturalized citizens who are accused of defrauding federal programs, including:
- Medicaid and Medicare
- The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)
- Other forms of financial assistance or benefits
This means that if the government alleges that you knowingly lied or concealed information about a financial fraud — even years before your naturalization — they could claim that you obtained citizenship through fraud or misrepresentation.
Under U.S. law, if a person willfully misrepresents or conceals a material fact during the citizenship process, they can be stripped of their citizenship.
Who Could Be Targeted
This policy affects a wide range of people, including:
- Doctors or healthcare professionals accused of improper billing or fraud in Medicaid/Medicare
- Low-income individuals who may have unknowingly received benefits they weren’t eligible for
- Immigrants who checked “No” on their N-400 citizenship application when asked if they had ever committed a crime for which they were not arrested
While the Justice Department says this policy aims to target major fraud schemes, experts warn that it could disproportionately affect poor immigrants and people of color, who are often the first to be investigated or accused in cases involving public benefits.
According to a Georgetown University professor, large-scale Medicaid or Medicare fraud is usually carried out by networks of professionals or institutions — not individual beneficiaries. Yet, the government’s expanded approach risks criminalizing and stripping citizenship from vulnerable individuals who may not have even understood that their actions were considered fraudulent.
Why Experts Call It Dangerous
This expanded denaturalization policy represents a major shift in how the U.S. views immigrants and citizenship. By linking immigration enforcement with healthcare fraud enforcement, it sends a chilling message — that even long-time U.S. citizens may not be safe from losing their status.
Experts say this approach could be:
- Discriminatory: It’s likely to disproportionately impact poor and minority immigrants.
- Invidious: It conflates healthcare access with immigration enforcement, which could deter people from seeking medical care or benefits.
- Destabilizing: It undermines trust between immigrant communities and public institutions.
You can also watch Attorney LaToya McBean Pompy’s YouTube video, “Denaturalization: Medicaid & Medicare Fraud Can Cost You Your U.S. Citizenship,” where she breaks down how these investigations work, the warning signs immigrants should look out for, and the steps you can take to protect your status.
