DOJ Invokes McCarthy-Era Law to Strip Somalia-born Minnesotan of Citizenship

The federal government is applying a McCarthy-era law to strip a Somalia-born Minneapolis man of his citizenship over actions that took place after he became a citizen. 

It’s a fundamental break with how the government has attempted to denaturalize people. Bound by extensive Supreme Court precedent, the DOJ has long pursued these cases against people who lied on their citizenship applications or omitted something significant enough that, had the government known, it would have declined the person’s citizenship application: war criminals who did not disclose atrocities in which they were involved, for example, or people who omitted serious crimes they committed from their applications. 

Now, Salah Osman Ahmed stands to lose his citizenship not because of any allegation about something he did before he became a citizen. Rather, under a 1952 statute that’s almost never been used, Ahmed stands to lose his citizenship because of actions he took while he was a citizen. 

The McCarthy-era statute grants the government enormous powers over recently minted citizens: it can revoke their citizenship if, in the five years after they become naturalized, they join an organization that, had they been a member at the time they applied for citizenship, would have caused the U.S. government to reject their application. Ahmed traveled to Somalia intending to join the militant group al-Shabaab, which would later be designated a terrorist group by the U.S. government. The law frames these actions as proof that he wilfully misrepresented his state of mind when he took an oath of allegiance to the U.S.

I was unable to find any other case in which the government solely relied on this law to strip someone of their citizenship. 

Ahmed’s case comes after Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate directed the DOJ last year to focus on people deemed to be a “national security concern” for denaturalization. Experts in immigration law and denaturalization told TPM that they hadn’t heard of anything like it. Some told TPM that the case, and others in which the government is trying to strip people of citizenship over allegations about actions they took after becoming citizens, raised issues that could make it to the Supreme Court.

If the Trump administration continues to use the tool that it’s applying in cases like Ahmed’s, it could place serious restrictions on the free speech and association of those who have naturalized within the last five years. Those restrictions do not exist for native-born citizens, or for those who have been citizens for more than five years. 

“All citizens have a right to freedom of speech and freedom of association, and the Supreme Court has been very clear that those rights apply absolutely equally between native-born citizens and naturalized citizens,” Cassandra Robertson, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University who has studied denaturalizations, told TPM. 

“So this idea that somebody could not join a group or express a political point of view for a period of time after they’re naturalized — that violates the First Amendment, and I suspect courts would agree,” she continued.

The law appears to have never been tested on appeal. It would likely run afoul of a 1943 Supreme Court decision that barred the government from stripping people of their citizenship over political associations, Patrick Weil, a visiting professor at Yale Law School who wrote a book on the history of denaturalizations in the U.S. told TPM.

“I think the courts will be very reluctant,” Weil said, adding that the courts largely distinguish between “an action made before the date of naturalization and after.”

The law has not been challenged in part because it’s been so rarely applied. In 2020, a judge denaturalized Iyman Faris, who plotted to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge on behalf of al-Qaeda under the provision. He appealed, but his attorneys dropped the case after he returned to Pakistan and became unreachable. Another May 2026 denaturalization, filed against Khalid Ouazzani, who pled guilty to providing material support to al-Qaeda, invokes the provision alongside a claim that he lied to the government while applying; Ouazzani purportedly told government attorneys that he began discussing ways to support al-Qaeda three years before he became a U.S. citizen. 

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, defended the broad push for denaturalizations. 

“Citizenship fraud is a serious crime; anyone who has broken the law and obtained citizenship through fraud and deceit will be held accountable,” she told TPM in a statement. “This isn’t a new initiative — it’s federal law and the entire Trump Administration remains committed to enforcing it.”

A DOJ official conceded to TPM that this was the first time the government had sought to strip someone of their citizenship using the 1952 law alone, but argued that it’s a distinction without a difference: in the Faris and Ouazzani cases, the person said, the department would have been willing to pursue denaturalization under just that law.

Daniel Gerdts, an attorney for Ahmed, told TPM that there were no grounds to revoke his client’s citizenship, and that his client had never been disloyal to the United States. 

“This is shameful,” he said of the case. 

Buying an AK-47

The Trump administration has spent its first year in office using immigration authorities to clamp down on the free speech of people with legal status. Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia graduate student who the administration attempted to deport in March 2025, is fighting to keep his green card after the administration invoked a rare national security provision to revoke the pro-Palestine activist’s status.

The Ahmed case is not that. The DOJ has not cited anything relating to Ahmed’s speech in his case. Rather, it’s deploying for the first time a tool against him — the 1952 law — that has threatening implications for freedom of speech. 

Documents filed in Ahmed’s case make the actions that led to his terrorism prosecution seem a lot more slapstick than menacing. After his family fled Somalia in 1995, he ended up in Minneapolis in 1999, before obtaining citizenship in August 2007. The war in his home country of Somalia had a new entrant: Ethiopia, backed by the U.S. In September 2007, Ahmed agreed to travel with a group to Somalia to fight Ethiopian troops. The Somali group that Ahmed agreed to join was al-Shabaab; months later, in March 2008, the State Department designated it a Foreign Terrorist Organization. 

Ahmed reached Somalia in early December 2007, arriving at an al-Shabaab training camp later that month. In a later sentencing filing, prosecutors made the reality of the trip sound pretty underwhelming: Ahmed found that, once at the camp, he’d have to raise money to buy his own AK-47. He eventually “claim[ed] that he had developed a skin condition that needed to be treated” and returned home. 

Another member of the group of more than 20 Minneapolis Somalis who traveled to fight later blew himself up in Somalia. He was the first U.S. citizen to stage a suicide bombing; the feds grew more aggressive and began to charge members of the group, including Ahmed. He agreed to cooperate within a week of his arrest; at sentencing, prosecutors asked the judge for a lower penalty, saying that his information had been “consistent and reliable.” The judge agreed to end his supervised release early, in 2022.

Undoing the ‘Great Replacement’

Trump ran in part on denaturalizations in the 2024 election. Stephen Miller promised “turbocharged” denaturalizations; Project 2025 supported the idea. Figures on the online hard right also supported the idea; Claremont Institute donor Charles Haywood called for a “review” of everyone naturalized after 1965. Greg Bovino, the former CBP commander assigned to run amok in American cities last year, has spent his retirement calling for the removal of 100 million people from the U.S., a figure that far exceeds estimates of non-citizens in the country.

In some ways, it’s the next logical step following the Great Replacement conspiracy theory that so animates the hard right: if immigration really is an illegitimate, byzantine plot to “replace” white Americans, can’t it be undone? 

So far, the reality has fallen far short of that. TPM identified and reviewed slightly more than 50 civil and criminal denaturalization actions filed since Trump took office a second time. It’s a slow process, and not a decision the executive branch can make unilaterally: a judge orders someone’s citizenship stripped. If a target hires a lawyer to contest a civil denaturalization case, the process can drag on. 

That hasn’t stopped the administration from trying. Last year, Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate issued the memo ordering attorneys to “maximally” pursue denaturalization cases, while broadly saying that any naturalized person “pos[ing] a potential danger to national security” merits scrutiny of their citizenship. 

McCarthy-era Law

To do that, in Ahmed’s case, the administration is using Part C of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act. Passed at the peak of the Red Scare, it’s antiquated now but, experts say, was likely in conflict with Supreme Court precedent at the time of its passage: it purported to make advocacy for “world communism” within five years of becoming a citizen grounds for denaturalization. 

It’s not clear that the provision was ever used before 2020. A 2005 law review article found that the government had never invoked the statute. 

In 2020, the DOJ moved to strip Iyman Faris, who was born in Pakistan, of his citizenship under the provision, while also accusing him of using another person’s passport to enter the U.S. before he became a citizen. Faris, a trucker who had been sentenced in 2003 for plotting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, lost the case. A judge found that his “undisputed affiliation with Al Qaeda, beginning less than 1 year after his naturalization,” was proof that he entered by willful misrepresentation.

Faris returned to Pakistan, and also appealed, though that quickly sputtered for bizarre reasons: his attorney said that Faris had fallen out of contact; a relative purportedly said that Pakistan’s security services were holding him. The appeals court dismissed the case.

In another 2026 case, the DOJ is moving to denaturalize Nicholas Eshun, a former Marine, over an alleged attempted sexual assault that took place after he became a citizen. That’s proceeding under a different statute. 

To Amanda Frost, a UVA law professor who wrote a book about the history of American citizenship, it’s a break with how the government has thought of citizenship. 

“They’re being very aggressive, certainly in the light of the historical context, which is that Republican and Democratic administrations have been very hesitant to use denaturalization liberally and have done so very sparingly and with lots of discretion,” she said. “They’re pushing the envelope, not just in like, ‘oh, now we’re gonna use it more liberally,’ but in making these constantly suspect to downright unconstitutional arguments in these cases.”

In Ahmed’s case, the DOJ argues that his decision to join al-Shabaab after becoming a citizen and before the group was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization is enough to serve as grounds for him losing his citizenship. At one point, the government’s account of a key moment differs. Before Ahmed’s 2013 sentencing, prosecutors said that when he left for Somalia in 2007, he “understood that he would be joining al-Shabaab, but did not have an understanding of the group’s operations and objectives.” 

In 2026, the government cited Ahmed’s trial testimony to argue that he “fully understood” al-Shabaab.

Gerdts, Ahmed’s attorney, told TPM that he tried to persuade the DOJ not to file the case. 

“He was the star witness at this terrorism trial, he helped out the United States immensely, and his reward is you’re gonna take away his citizenship?” Gerdts said, recalling a conversation with a government attorney assigned to the case. “He said the best he could do would to be flexible about timing. I said, ‘well, could you delay it two and a half years?’ And he just started laughing.”