The Trump administration made denaturalization a priority during the first term, creating a special Justice Department section to pursue these cases. The administration now appears positioned to expand these efforts with a policy requiring that denaturalization be pursued wherever legally possible.

“In order to protect the due process rights of persons facing a denaturalization proceeding it will be important for federal judges to appoint counsel to represent them in court,” Ingrid Eagly, a UCLA law professor and co-director of the Criminal Justice Program, told HuffPost.