An Office of Denaturalization is a Dangerous Step

By Roger Berkowitz

The  Department of  Justice announced last week the creation of a special section to denaturalize American citizens. The sovereign right of a nation to control who is nationalized or denationalized is unchallenged, and yet in practice the rise of mass denationalization first emerged in Europe in the 1930s. For Hannah Arendt, it is a truism that “One is almost tempted to measure the degree of totalitarian infection by the extent to which the concerned governments use their sovereign right of denationalization.” The fact that some citizens who lied on their citizenship applications are being denationalized is not in itself a sign of trouble. All countries make use of denationalization to some extent. And yet, the normalization of the practice through the creation of a “Denaturalization Section” within the Department of Justice threatens to make the practice of denationalization routine; and following the law of bureaucracy, offices will typically expand and grow their powers and responsibilities. Denaturalization should be an exceptional procedure, not something regularized and with an entire bureaucratic apparatus established for its enforcement. Depriving people of their status as citizens does not strip them simply of rights, but also leaves them fully outside the sphere of organized human society. They lack not the right to a trial or the right to speak, but the right to have rights as a member of human society. Mass denationalization is a dangerous road.