In the United States, citizenship is welded to the Constitution, and elaborated in nationality and immigration law and regulations.1 Citizenship is also constructed through a deeply rooted founding narrative—alive today—that the citizenry is united by ideals such as freedom, equality, and inalienable rights, rather than through heredity or ethnicity. Much can be learned from the study of how Americans become non-citizens in the eyes of the law, as the law itself serves as a deeply coded reflection of the national consciousness of any era. American ideals concerning citizenship have not always been reflected in practice. The country’s history shows that, when nativist movements have surged, citizenship law has been amended to the detriment of vulnerable groups. Examples abound, including the Naturalization Act of 1906 and the National Origin Act of 1924, of the U.S. government manipulating citizenship in discriminatory ways. These dynamics form the backdrop for the current U.S. administration’s xenophobic and nativist platform. This report focuses on one component of that larger enterprise, examining the systematic deployment of state powers over citizenship—including deprivation of nationality, deportation, exclusion, and exile—to attack racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, and other members of marginalized groups, and to normalize their inhuman treatment. Three Intersecting Modes of Citizenship Deprivation This report is divided into four main chapters. The first reviews the history of citizenship and its deprivation in the U.S., and examines how U.S. citizenship laws and practices compare to those of selected other countries. The second, third, and fourth chapters cover several policy areas that govern access to citizenship in the United States, and show how weaknesses in the regime can be exploited. These chapters examine: • Denaturalization, which is the revocation of U.S. citizenship acquired by foreign nationals or formerly stateless people through naturalization. The key actors in this process are lawyers within the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) including assistant U.S. attorneys who initiate judicial denaturalization actions in federal courts. • Denial and revocation of U.S. passports, an area of practice that involves decision-making initially by the United States Department of State as to whether or not the affected individual is in fact a U.S. citizen. Those whose citizenship is contested or denied must bring affirmative litigation, which the DOJ defends on behalf of the U.S. government. • Political attacks on citizenship by birth in the United States. This includes policy proposals and surrounding rhetoric regarding the status of children born in the United States to non-citizens. Executive Summary 7