Trump Wants to Revoke Citizenship From Naturalized Americans Convicted of Crimes

On Sunday on Air Force One, Trump told reporters he would absolutely revoke citizenship from naturalized immigrants convicted of crimes. Then came the qualifier: “If I have the power to do it - I’m not sure that I do, but if I do.”

Here’s what prompted this announcement. Last Wednesday, an Afghan national named Rahmanullah Lakanwal allegedly shot two National Guard members near the White House, killing 20-year-old Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom and critically wounding Air Force Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolfe. Lakanwal came here in 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome, the Biden-era evacuation program for Afghans who worked with U.S. forces. But the part that gets memory-holed is the timeline. Lakanwal applied for asylum in 2024, and he was granted asylum in April 2025. That approval happened under Trump. The asylum vetting was done by Trump’s Department of Homeland Security. That department is run by Trump’s own appointee, Kristi Noem. Multiple outlets confirmed it. Yet somehow this keeps ending up as a footnote instead of the headline.

And the law is not vague. Naturalized citizens can only lose citizenship if the government proves it was obtained illegally or by hiding facts or lying. Not committed a crime later. Not the president feels like it. You have to show the citizenship was improperly obtained. That’s 8 U.S.C. 1451. This isn’t up for debate unless Congress rewrites the entire framework, and even Trump’s own Justice Department memo on denaturalization quotes that same law about how citizenship was obtained - though the memo also talks up using denaturalization against “naturalized criminals.”

So when Trump says if I have the authority, that little hinge is doing a lot of work. It turns an unconstitutional idea into a hypothetical wish. He’s not promising anything. He’s fantasizing. It’s performance.

What never gets the same energy is the real question: why his administration approved Lakanwal’s asylum in the first place. The vetting was theirs. The oversight was theirs. The responsibility was theirs. Instead of owning that, they’ve cooked up a new debate about revoking citizenship from naturalized immigrants who commit crimes, something he almost certainly cannot do.

And this is the pattern. Throw out a dramatic, legally impossible idea, watch everyone argue about theoretical presidential powers, and skate right past the operational decisions happening inside the government he actually controls. The shiny hypothetical wins. The concrete failure gets buried.

Trump wants to revoke citizenship trends. Trump administration approved the asylum claim seven months before the shooting barely blips. One story imagines a future. The other confronts a present-day decision.

If Trump wanted to talk about preventing this kind of tragedy, he’d be explaining how his agencies vetted Lakanwal, what protocols they used, and what they plan to change. Instead, he’s outlining a plan that would violate the Fourteenth Amendment, require new federal statutes, and fail in court before the ink dries.

Meanwhile, by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s own count, there have been 8,000 cases like his since Trump took office. These decisions are being made every single day with real consequences. But he keeps directing everyone’s attention to something he can’t do instead of something he did do.

That’s the trick. Propose the impossible. Let the outrage machine light up. Never answer for the choices that already happened.

Correction, September 28th, 2026: This post first said Kristi Noem signed off on Lakanwal’s asylum - that line is out; asylum officers decide those cases, and they work for the Department of Homeland Security, which she headed at the time. It also said Trump’s own Justice Department had acknowledged denaturalization only applies to fraud cases - its June 2025 memo quotes the law about how citizenship was obtained, but it also talks up using denaturalization against “naturalized criminals”; and it said the asylum was approved four months before the shooting - it was approved on April 23rd, 2025, seven months before.

Update, September 28th, 2026: A few lines now say who says so and add detail - the 8,000 figure is Kristi Noem’s own count, the vetting line now says it was the asylum vetting, since Lakanwal was also vetted when he arrived in 2021, and the denaturalization line now covers citizenship obtained illegally as well as by lying. Apostrophes and quote marks lost in an old publishing glitch are back, each quote checked against its source.