Professor Gregory Germain spoke with Newsweek for the story “Could Donald Trump Deport Americans?” The article examines the legal issues surrounding how the Trump administration could strip American citizens of their citizenship and deport them to prisons in El Salvador.
Germain said that the U.S can deport naturalized, foreign-born U.S. citizens. “Under existing law, the government can revoke the naturalization of citizens if they made misrepresentations or omissions during their naturalization process. There is a presumption that members of a communist party or a terrorist organization during the 5 years after naturalization misrepresented or omitted information.”
“Once their naturalization is revoked, they can be deported.”
He said there would first have to be court hearings. Germain said that revoking the citizenship of someone born in the U.S. is a far more difficult process. “Revoking citizenship of natural-born citizens, as opposed to naturalized citizens, is more uncertain,” he said.
“Trump’s new executive order denying citizenship to children born here of illegal aliens only applies prospectively [in the future] so far.”
“It is conceivable that he or Congress could attempt to make it retroactive to people born here before the new executive order, although it is far from clear what the courts would ultimately say about that,” he said.