CONCLUSION: THE THIN END OF THE WEDGE The laws, policies, and practices described in this report directly affect relatively few people, but cause outsized harm—and have the potential to spread. As Hannah Arendt pointed out 60 years ago, the creation of mass categories of human beings who “live…outside the pale of the law” historically starts small. “Easy precedents” in the form of denaturalizations affecting a small number of naturalized Europeans prior to World War I gave way to mass denationalization during the interwar period. The phenomenon ultimately left millions stateless.731 Deprivation and denial of citizenship are radical measures, leading to deportation, statelessness, detention, and other forms of extraordinary abuse catalogued in these pages. This report has shown that such measures are now applied almost exclusively to marginalized communities, in the United States and elsewhere, with national origin used as a more legally and socially pliable proxy for race and religion. Although denaturalization and denial and revocation of U.S. passports have only been applied to perhaps a few hundred people so far under the Trump administration, these cases represent a systematic attack on the American conception of citizenship. The current administration’s racist and xenophobic rhetoric, actions, and policies on citizenship and immigration suggest the developments examined in this report are just the beginning. If this administration’s current policies and practices proceed unchallenged, deprivation of nationality in all forms will increase, and additional groups will be targeted. In a jus soli country like the United States, children born on the territory cannot inherent the migration status of their parents.732 Children born in the United States are U.S. citizens. The baseline premise, forged in the crucible of Civil War and the economy of human bondage that ignited it, is that children are not born into “illegality” and are not defined by the persecution, beliefs, choices, or identity of their parents. Policies that pander to false narratives of authenticity or seize on the state’s own governance weaknesses to further such narratives serve only to undermine the foundational and revolutionary innovation of the U.S. political system: a bold attempt, however imperfect, to construct a society in which people can be born free. Conclusion: The Thin End of the Wedge 161