The DOJ Just Filed Its Largest Denaturalization Batch Ever. Officials Call the 25 New Cases “Only the Beginning.”
On August 3, 2026, the Justice Department announced what it called “the largest coordinated denaturalization effort in Department history”: 25 new civil complaints filed against naturalized citizens from 17 countries in a single two-week stretch. It is the fourth such rollout since May, and by a wide margin the biggest.
This batch has no marquee villain on the order of the Cuban spy or the alleged Al-Qaeda leader accused of murdering two Iraqi police officers named in May. It has an 80-year-old man, a soldier discharged in disgrace, and a mother accused of helping sell child sexual abuse material — and a claim of scale the department’s own coverage that day couldn’t even agree on.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche (R) called it “only the beginning.” The department’s own stated fiscal-year target suggests he means it.
- 25 naturalized citizens named in the August 3, 2026 batch, from 17 countries — the largest single denaturalization tranche the DOJ has filed to date — DOJ Office of Public Affairs
- 123 vs. 88 the DOJ's own claimed total civil denaturalization complaints since Jan. 20, 2025 — versus the total figure Fox News Digital printed the same day covering the same release — Just The News / Epoch Times vs. Fox News Digital
- 250 denaturalization cases the department has told CBS News it is aiming to file by the end of fiscal year 2026, which closes September 30 — CBS News
The complaints, filed in federal district courts between July 20 and August 3, name defendants from Pakistan, Moldova, India, Mexico, Colombia, Nigeria, Liberia, Ghana, Jamaica, Taiwan, Honduras, Cameroon, Jordan, Cuba, El Salvador, Haiti, and Sweden. The alleged conduct spans attempted murder, child sexual abuse, domestic violence, marriage fraud, identity fraud, passport fraud, bank and credit-card fraud, and practicing medicine without a license.
Dwyane Robinson, 44, of Jamaica, naturalized through military service, was discharged under other-than-honorable conditions in 2013 without completing the honorable service the naturalization required — and was later convicted in North Carolina of attempted first-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. Tatiana Power, 46, of Moldova, naturalized in 2010, is accused of participating in the sale of child sexual abuse material the DOJ says predated her citizenship. Jose Luis Martinez-Zavala, 80, of Mexico, naturalized in 2014, was convicted in 2020 of the aggravated sexual assault of a child a decade earlier. A South Carolina man the DOJ has not yet named is accused of concealing a domestic assault in which he beat and choked his wife, badly enough to hospitalize her, before later pleading guilty to assault and battery.
Every outlet that covered the August 3 release agrees on the headline number: 25 new cases, the largest single batch yet. They do not agree on the running total. Fox News Digital’s own report — the piece that put this story on our radar — states that the new cases “bring the department’s total denaturalization filings to 88 since Jan. 20, 2025.” Just The News and The Epoch Times, covering the identical DOJ release the same day, both put that cumulative total at 123.
We could not resolve which figure is correct. justice.gov’s press pages returned an automated block to our direct requests — the same problem that dogs anyone trying to verify a DOJ release without going through wire coverage — so we are printing both numbers, attributed to where each appeared, rather than picking one. What is not in dispute is the trend line underneath either number: a Justice Department that averaged 11 denaturalization complaints a year from 1990 to 2017 has now filed dozens within a single week, twice, inside of three months.
May 8 — 12 defendants, including a former U.S. ambassador convicted of spying for Cuba and a priest convicted of child sex abuse. AAG Shumate called it “a down payment.”
June 8 — 17 defendants from 13 countries, the largest batch to that point.
July 20 — a joint DHS-DOJ release naming 10 defendants, including Yoskmaikel Rodriguez Perez of Cuba, accused of $886,000 in Medicare fraud, and Martin Garcia Cardiel of Mexico, facing 19 counts of aggravated child abuse.
August 3 — 25 defendants from 17 countries, filed across the same two-week window that opened with the July 20 release. DOJ calls it the largest tranche yet.
The cast has changed since May. Pam Bondi (R), who set the denaturalization priority as Attorney General, was removed from the post on April 2, 2026; President Trump named Todd Blanche (R) Acting Attorney General the same day, and formally nominated him for the permanent job in June. As of this writing Blanche remains in an acting capacity awaiting Senate confirmation. Brett A. Shumate, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, has run the program’s day-to-day litigation continuously since his June 2025 memo created it, and is the named DOJ voice across all four 2026 batches.
The Homeland Security Department is now visibly in the mix too. Markwayne Mullin (R), confirmed DHS Secretary on March 24, 2026, co-signed the July 20 release with the Civil Division — a joint posture that did not exist in the May and June batches, which were DOJ-only.
“Today's filings represent the largest coordinated denaturalization effort in Department history, but they are only the beginning. The Justice Department will continue to use every tool available to protect the integrity of the naturalization process and the safety of the American people.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche (R) · DOJ release, August 3, 2026
American citizenship is a privilege, and it must be earned honestly. If you come here, break our laws, and lie in your immigration proceedings, you forfeit that privilege. @DHSgov will not stand idly by while Americans are harmed by criminals including sex offenders.
Civic Intelligence has covered the legal mechanics of this program twice before, so we won’t re-run the full explainer here. The short version: these are civil actions under 8 U.S.C. § 1451, decided by a federal judge with no jury, requiring “clear, unequivocal, and convincing” evidence that a defendant either was never eligible for citizenship or concealed a material fact to get it. They are not criminal convictions in themselves — several of the August 3 defendants, including Robinson and Martinez-Zavala, were already convicted of the underlying conduct in separate prior criminal cases, and the new complaints allege only that they hid that conduct on their naturalization paperwork.
That distinction matters because the volume here is new. A tool the Justice Department used a dozen times a year for nearly three decades is now producing multiple double-digit press releases a quarter, and the department has told CBS News it is aiming for roughly 250 cases before the fiscal year closes September 30 — a pace that leaves little room for the case-by-case scrutiny the “clear and convincing” standard was written to require.
This Department of Justice will not stop pursuing denaturalization against those who lied their way to citizenship while hiding violent crimes, sexual abuse of children, and fraud. Twenty-five more today. This is only the beginning.
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
Paraphrased from Acting AG Blanche's on-record DOJ statement — consistent with his public Truth Social account, @DAGToddBlanche
The department is not hiding its ambitions. CBS News reported in June that officials are planning at least 250 denaturalization filings by the close of fiscal year 2026 — roughly ten times the August 3 batch, in barely two months. If that pace holds, the “largest ever” label on this batch has an expiration date measured in weeks, not months.
The cases named here — an attempted murderer, a man who beat and choked his wife, a Moldovan-born woman accused in a child-exploitation ring — are not the ones inviting scrutiny of the program itself. The scrutiny belongs on the gap between the department’s stated quota and the individualized proof each case is supposed to require, and on a press operation that, on the same day, couldn’t hand two different reporters the same running total.
Twenty-five MORE denaturalization cases filed by our great Justice Department — a new record. If you lied about violent crimes, sexual abuse, or fraud to become a Citizen, we are coming for that Citizenship. Only the beginning!
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
Paraphrased, consistent with the President's public statements on denaturalization — not a verbatim post
TODAY: The Justice Department filed a record 25 denaturalization cases against naturalized citizens from 17 countries accused of concealing attempted murder, child sexual abuse, domestic violence, and fraud on their naturalization applications. This is the largest coordinated denaturalization effort in Department history — and it is only the beginning.
The Justice Department filed its largest denaturalization batch yet on August 3 — 25 people, 17 countries, and a stated ambition to file ten times that many before October. The underlying law hasn’t changed since 1952 and the individual cases are, on their face, defensible. What’s new is the speed, the volume, and a department whose own public messaging couldn’t settle on how many cases it has filed this year. A program built on an exacting evidentiary standard is being run, increasingly, like a monthly numbers target — and the numbers themselves don’t yet agree.
