US President Donald Trump and officials from his administration have hinted that they might consider revoking the US citizenship of Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s Democratic mayoral candidate.
Separately, Trump said former aide Elon Musk would have to “close up shop and head back home to South Africa” amid a row over his tax breaks and Trump’s narrowly passed spending bill.
But would the Trump administration have the power to revoke the citizenship of Mamdani and Musk, both foreign-born, naturalised citizens of the US?
What is the immigration status of Mamdani and Musk?
Mamdani, 33, was born in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, to ethnically Indian parents. He moved to New York at the age of seven and became a naturalised US citizen in 2018.
Musk was born in 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa to a Canadian mother and South African father. At the age of 17, he moved to Canada of where he is also a citizen. In 1992, he moved to the US to study at the University of Pennsylvania. He became a naturalised US citizen in 2002, according to a biography of him written in 2023 by journalist Walter Isaacson.
In October 2024, the Washington Post reported that Musk began his career in the US without the proper work authorisation, but Musk has denied this. “I was in fact allowed to work in the US,” Musk wrote in an X post on the same day the report was published. “I was on a J-1 visa that transitioned to an H1-B,” Musk wrote in another post. A J-1 visa is a temporary visa for foreign students, while an H-1B is a temporary work visa.
To become naturalised as a US citizen, an individual needs to be above the age of 18 and to have lived continuously in the US as a green card holder for five years, or three years if they are married to a US citizen.
What has the Trump administration said about Mamdani?
Andy Ogles, a Republican Tennessee representative, wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi on June 26, asking for the Department of Justice to probe whether Mamdani, who identifies as a democratic socialist, should be subject to denaturalisation proceedings.
Posting a copy of the letter to Bondi on his X page, Ogles wrote: “Zohran ‘little muhammad’ Mamdani is an antisemitic, socialist, communist who will destroy the great City of New York. He needs to be DEPORTED. Which is why I am calling for him to be subject to denaturalization proceedings. ”
Ogles said that the investigation should be conducted on the grounds that Mamdani may have procured US citizenship through “willful misrepresentation or concealment of material support for terrorism. ”
The Tennessee Republican cited reports, including an article published in the New York Post, stating that Mamdani expressed solidarity with “individuals convicted of terrorism-related offenses prior to becoming a US citizen. ” Ogles said that Mamdani rapped “Free the Holy Land Five / My guys. ”
“The Holy Land Foundation was convicted in 2008 for providing material support to Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization. Publicly praising the Foundation’s convicted leadership as ‘my guys’ raises serious concerns about whether Mr. Mamdani held affiliations or sympathies he failed to disclose during the naturalization process,” Ogles wrote in his letter to Bondi.
“Moreover, Mr. Mamdani has recently refused opportunities to reject the pro-terrorist rallying cry to ‘globalize the intifada’ a call to expand violent attacks on civilians to the United States and around the world,” Ogles wrote.
Mamdani has also pledged to stop masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents “from deporting our neighbours”. When Trump was asked about this on Tuesday at a news conference, he said that if Mamdani prevents ICE agents from conducting deportation operations, “Well, then, we’ll have to arrest him. ”
“We don’t need a communist in this country, but if we have one, I’m going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation,” Trump said, adding, “we’ll send him money, we’ll send him all the things he needs to run the government. ”
Trump continued, citing claims that Mamdani is in the US illegally, saying, “We’re going to look at everything”. The president also voiced support for the current New York mayor, Eric Adams, who is also a member of the Democratic Party.
How has Mamdani responded?
Mamdani posted a statement on his X account in response to Trump’s comments on Tuesday.
“The President of the United States just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention camp and deported. Not because I have broken any law but because I will refuse to let ICE terrorize our city,” Mamdani wrote in his statement.
Mamdani also called Trump’s praise of Adams “unsurprising”, adding: “At the very moment when MAGA Republicans are attempting to destroy the social safety net, kick millions of New Yorkers off of healthcare and enrich their billionaire donors at the expense of working families, it is a scandal that Eric Adams echoes this President’s division, distraction and hate. Voters will resoundingly reject it in November. ”
What has the Trump administration said about Elon Musk?
While the billionaire owner of Tesla and SpaceX was once a key aide to Trump and a major donor to his presidential campaign last year, Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” has created a public rift between Trump and Musk.
Musk has repeatedly decried the bill online and has threatened to form a new political party as a response to the bill passing.
Musk stands to be affected by the finance bill that the Senate narrowly passed on Tuesday, as it ends tax credits worth up to $7,500 for purchases of electric vehicles (EVs) from September 30. This could significantly reduce consumer demand for EVs in the US.
In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump wrote, “Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. ”
“Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED! ! ! ” Trump added, in reference to the Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory body aimed at boosting government efficiency and upgrading information technology, that Musk formed and led at the start of Trump’s second administration, before leaving on May 30.
On Tuesday, when reporters asked Trump if he was going to deport Musk, he said, “We’ll have to take a look. We might have to put DOGE on Elon. ”
On what grounds can the US revoke citizenship for naturalised citizens?
Under certain circumstances, US citizens by naturalisation can lose their status as citizens. This process is also called denaturalisation.
This can happen if naturalised citizens commit certain crimes, including terrorism, war crimes, human rights violations, sex crimes or naturalisation fraud, meaning they obtained their citizenship through fraud, misrepresentation or illegal procurement.
On June 11, the Justice Department issued a memo stating that it would “prioritise denaturalisation” by instituting civil proceedings for people “if they either ‘illegally procured’ naturalization or procured naturalization by ‘concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation’. ”
The memo added: “The Civil Division shall prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence. ”
A naturalised citizen can also lose their citizenship if they commit an act of treason against the US, or run for public office or join the military of a foreign country.
Most recently, the Justice Department announced on June 13 that UK citizen Elliott Duke, a convicted collector and distributor of child sexual abuse material, had been denaturalised. In a news release, the Justice Department said Duke enlisted in the US Army in 2012 and began receiving and sending child sex abuse material online while serving in Germany. Duke did not list this crime in his naturalisation application in 2013. He was convicted of receipt and possession of child pornography in 2014.
Could either Musk or Mamdani be denaturalised?
It is not likely, according to experts.
“Denaturalisation is limited to cases where the government can prove material fraud in their original applications,” said Michael Kagan, professor of law at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
“It is rare and unlikely for either Musk or Mamdani. This appears to be irresponsible rhetoric designed to intimidate political opponents. ”
What is the history of denaturalisation in the US?
The US has revoked the citizenship of naturalised citizens on different occasions over the past few decades.
Cases of denaturalisation were more frequent during the first half of the 20th century while the two world wars and, later, the Cold War with the Soviet Union were ongoing. Between 1926 and the mid-1940s, hundreds of people were denaturalised every year, according to political scientist Patrick Weil, author of The Sovereign Citizen, published in 2017.
The US government frequently tried to denaturalise citizens during the two “Red Scare” periods of 1917 to 1920 and 1947 to 1957, when the fear of communism was particularly high in the US. During this time, it was also very hard to obtain US citizenship by naturalisation.
People who were denaturalised at the time included communists and Nazi sympathisers. Two famous cases were:
- Emma Goldman, an anarchist activist who was born in Lithuania, which was then part of the Russian Empire. Goldman migrated to the US in 1885. When World War I broke out, she opposed US involvement and military conscription. For this, she was jailed in 1917 for two years at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. By the time of her release, the hysteria around communism had taken form in the US and in 1919, she was denaturalised and deported to Soviet Russia.
- Paul Knauer was born in Germany and arrived in the US in 1925. He became a citizen in 1937. In 1946, Knauer was denaturalised on the grounds that he concealed his affiliation with the German-American Bund, an organisation considered to promote Nazi propaganda.
In 1967, the trend for denaturalisation slowed down when the US Supreme Court ruled that a US citizen could not be involuntarily deprived of their citizenship unless they met the specific criteria of having obtained naturalisation by fraud or of having committed serious offences.
The ruling came at the end of a case involving Beys Afroyim, who was born in Poland and became a naturalised US citizen in 1926. The US government tried to revoke his citizenship because Afroyim had voted in an Israeli legislative election in 1951.
