You Could Not Make Up Trump's Latest Horrifying Immigration Court Case

Donald Trump won the presidency in part on promises to deport immigrants who have criminal records and lack permanent legal status. But his earliest executive orders—trying to undo birthright citizenship, suspending critical refugee programs—made clear he wants to attack immigrants with permanent legal status too. In our series Who Gets to Be American This Week? , we'll track the Trump administration's attempts to exclude an ever-growing number of people from the American experiment.

For over 100 years, the United States has been a hub for immigrants looking for a better life. Millions were welcomed in and went on to become naturalized citizens, contributing immensely to our communities, economy, and culture. Yet, President Donald Trump has placed a target on these Americans' backs, instructing his administration to go after naturalized citizens over ill-defined national security threats and strip them of their US citizenship. Though this is not the first time an American president has focused on denaturalizing folks, Trump is authorizing the process in a much more sweeping way, evidenced in a newly published memo instructing Department of Justice employees to prioritize denaturalization cases.

Meanwhile, some positive news: An immigrant child battling a leukemia diagnosis who was arrested last month after showing up with his family at a court hearing filed the first lawsuit against the Trump administration's policy directing immigration agents to target courthouses, and it worked to secure his release.

Here's the immigration news we're keeping an eye on this week:

Department of Justice Focuses on Denaturalizing Americans

A new memo dropped this week, and in it Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate directs all Civilian Division employees to prioritize denaturalization, the process of revoking someone's US citizenship. The mechanism has historically been used under relatively rare circumstances, but it is being revived by the White House under the pretense of protecting national security. To Elora Mukherjee, clinical law professor at Columbia University and director of the school's Immigrants' Rights Clinic, it's an effort to “redefine who gets to be American.”

The memo from June 11 lays out the agency's new priorities, emphasizing denaturalization cases alongside ending antisemitism and attacking sanctuary jurisdictions. Under federal code , denaturalization is only possible if the government has evidence that a person “illegally procured” their American citizenship, meaning they intentionally misrepresented themselves when applying. But the Department of Justice memo instructs the agency to also target naturalized Americans who engaged in financial fraud, furthered criminal gangs or drug cartels, face pending criminal charges, or threaten national security. Plus, DOJ can decide to pursue denaturalization for reasons outside of these new categories, as it sees fit.

“The categories set forth in this memo are almost limitless,” Mukherjee said, and noted that the addition of the caveat that the DOJ can pursue denaturalization cases at its own discretion suggests that “in essence, there are no limiting principles guiding which the Civil Division should not denaturalize.”

Denaturalization was a tactic used during the first half of the ^20th century against former Nazi officials and other war criminals who used forged and fraudulent credentials to obtain US citizenship in order to avoid accountability, according to a Case Western Reserve University report . The Obama administration revived it, focusing on denaturalizing citizens who were deemed potential terrorist threats, and Trump continued the effort in his first term. By 2018, there had been a 200 percent increase in denaturalization cases. But it still remained a relatively rare occurrence, with only 300 denaturalization cases pursued between 1990 and 2017, according to the American Immigration Council . Plus, a 2017 Supreme Court decision made it harder for the federal government to revoke a naturalized American's citizenship.

Mukherjee believes this latest memo “seems to authorize more and broader denaturalizations than during Trump's first administration.” Often, immigrants must give up their home country's citizenship in order to obtain US citizenship, but if they lose both, that person effectively becomes stateless. It's also not clear what this would mean for children and family members who derived their US citizenship through a naturalized person targeted by the Trump administration.

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“This is part of the effort to terrorize those who were not born in the United States and instill fear in immigrant communities and mixed-status families,” Mukherjee said. “People assume that they would be safe because they are US citizens.”

Children Arrested by ICE Are Suing the Federal Government

Back in May, a 6-year-old boy, along with his 9-year-old sister and mother, sat in a Los Angeles immigrant processing center for 11 hours. While in custody, an officer lifted his shirt, revealing a gun. Terrified, the young boy urinated on himself and remained in his soiled clothes until he and his family were transferred to a Texas detention center. On Thursday, after more than a month, the family was released.

The family of three filed the first lawsuit challenging the arrest of children at courthouses, a policy the Trump administration has been using to target immigrants. They were initially arrested after attending an immigration court hearing, where they discovered the federal government was dismissing their case. The family is from Honduras and applied for asylum in the US last year under the Biden administration's CBP One app—Trump immediately ended the program upon entering his second term—and was legally admitted.

The president has long accused immigrants of being criminals for entering the country illegally, but Mukherjee, who is representing the 6-year-old boy and his family, told me that “this family did everything right.”

“They waited to enter the United States until they had legal authorization to do so through a CBP One appointment. Then at the point that the family was paroled into the United States, Homeland Security made the determination that the family was not a flight risk and did not pose a danger to the community.”

While the family was put in a Texas detention center, the government placed them under expedited removal , when immigration officers could summarily deport certain noncitizens without a court hearing. The 6-year-old boy has leukemia and missed medical appointments while being held in detention, where Mukherjee said his mother watched her son's health deteriorate.

Mukherjee filed a habeas petition for the family, arguing the government violated their due process rights and the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable seizure. “This family's release shows that ICE responds to public pressure,” Mukherjee said. “When people across the nation expressed concern about this family being snatched out of their community, subject to arrest at a courthouse and detention for weeks, ICE released them.”

Judge Rules Trump Cannot Block Asylum Claims

One of the first actions Trump took upon beginning his second term was signing an executive order cutting off legal pathways for migrants hoping to seek refuge in the US through the southern border. He directed his Cabinet to reject migrants' asylum claims with no exceptions. A group of immigrant rights groups along with 13 migrants filed for a restraining order back in February, and finally, after it worked its way through the courts, on Wednesday US District Court Judge Randolph Moss ruled the president does not have the unilateral authority to take away the opportunity to apply for asylum.

The president cannot “adopt an alternative immigration system, which supplants the statutes that Congress enacted,” Moss wrote in a lengthy decision , explaining how the president's order misconstrues federal immigration law. Since 1980, asylum has been grounded in US immigration law, where any migrant who comes to a US border and expresses credible fear of persecution in their home country can be legally admitted. According to a Department of Homeland Security report , in 2023 over 50,000 migrants were granted asylum out of over 400,000 applications.

“This is a hugely important decision,” Lee Gelernt, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union who argued on behalf of the plaintiffs, said in a statement . “Not only will it save the lives of families fleeing grave danger, it reaffirms that the president cannot ignore the Congress laws has passed and the most basic premise of our country's separation of powers.”

All of the individual plaintiffs in this case applied for asylum but had their claims dismissed and were either detained by US immigration agents or sent back to their home countries, which included Afghanistan, Ecuador, Egypt, Peru, and Turkey. While Moss agreed that Trump's order was unlawful, he postponed his order from taking effect for two weeks to allow the government to file an appeal. He also agreed to certify the asylum-seekers into a class-action lawsuit, enabling this case to cover immigrants currently present in the US This will be a test case of expanded class-action status in the wake of the Supreme Court's recent decision limiting nationwide injunctions.

Haitian Immigrants Are Protected From Deportation—For Now

Since 2010, when Haiti was struck by a devastating earthquake, nationals of Haiti have been allowed legal entry into the US under Temporary Protected Status. That has allowed Haitians to live and work here without threat of deportation—until Trump returned to office. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem tried to revoke TPS for Haitian nationals, but on Tuesday US District Court Judge Brian Cogan blocked Noem, ruling she doesn't have the “statutory or inherent authority” to do so.

The Trump administration has been furiously trying to undo TPS designations the Biden administration extended in the waning months of that presidency, but have faced legal challenges nearly every time. Haiti is the latest country to be targeted, with DHS announcing last week that Haitian immigrants will lose their TPS on Sept. 2, after the Biden administration had extended it until 2026 . A group of Haitians quickly filed suit, claiming Noem's actions violated federal law.

Judge Cogan agreed, noting that by shortening the length of these Haitians' TPS designation, Noem has given them less than three months to sort out their lives until they face potential deportation. That's a situation also facing hundreds of thousands of immigrants currently in the US under TPS from Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela, El Salvador, and Honduras who have limited time left until they will no longer be allowed to remain in the US lawfully.

According to the State Department, since March 2024, Haiti has been in a state of emergency . It's the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, facing political instability that's given way to widespread robbery, carjackings, sexual assault, and kidnappings. For years Trump has spewed vitriol against Haiti, accusing Haitian immigrants of spreading AIDS in the US and referring to it as a “shithole country .” Last year, he baselessly claimed Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating cats and dogs .

Rallying from a recent win at the Supreme Court in the separate birthright citizenship case , White House analyst Abigail Jackson said the government would be appealing Cogan's decision. “This unlawful order will meet the same fate similar injunctions have met in the Supreme Court,” she said.