US President Donald Trump and officials in his administration suggested that they might consider revoking the US citizenship of New York City's Democratic mayoral candidate Zoran Mamdani.
Separately, Trump said former aide Elon Musk must “close the store and return to South Africa” amid his tax deduction and Trump's slightly passed spending bill.
But does the Trump administration have the power to revoke the citizenship of Mamdani and Musk, both foreign-born, naturalized citizens of the United States?
What is the situation with mam ticks and mask immigration?
Mamdani, 33, was born to ethnic Indian parents in Kampala's Uganda capital. He moved to New York at the age of seven and became a naturalized US citizen in 2018.
Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1971 to a Canadian mother and a South African father. At age 17, he moved to Canada. In 1992 he moved to the United States to study at the University of Pennsylvania. He became a naturalized US citizen in 2002, according to his biography written by journalist Walter Isaxon in 2023.
In October 2024, the Washington Post reported that Musk began his career in the US without permission to work properly, which Musk denied. “In fact, I was allowed to work in the US,” Musk wrote in X's post the same day the report was published. “I was using a J-1 visa that I had migrated to H1-B,” Musk wrote in another post. The J-1 visa is a temporary visa for foreign students, and the H-1B is a temporary work visa.
To become naturalized as a US citizen, an individual must be 18 years of age or over and reside in the United States continuously as a green cardholder for five years, or three years if married to a US citizen.
What did the Trump administration say about the mam tick?
Tennessee Republican leader Andy Ogres wrote a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondy on June 26, asking the Department of Justice to investigate whether Mamdani, who identified as a democratic socialist, would be subject to degeneration procedures.
Posting a copy of the letter to Bondi on the X page, Ogles wrote:
Ogles said the investigation should be conducted because Mamdani may have procured US citizenship through “willful misrepresentation or concealment of material support for terrorism.”
The Tennessee Republicans cited a report containing an article published in the New York Post, saying Mamdani expressed solidarity with “an individual convicted of a terrorist crime before becoming a US citizen.” Ogles said Mamdani rapped “Free the Holy Land Five/My Guys.”
“The Holy Land Foundation was convicted in 2008 for providing material support to Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization. Publicly praised the foundation's convicted leadership as “Mygers” raises serious concerns about whether Mamdani had not belonged during the naturalization process.”
Additionally, Mamdani recently denied the opportunity to reject terrorist rallies.
Zohran “Little Muhammad” Mamdani is an anti-Semitic, socialist and communist who destroys the great cities of New York. He needs to be deported. So I'm why I want him to be subject to the degeneration procedure.
My letter to @agpambondi is attached. pic.twitter.com/rwczm67vor
– Rep. Andy Ogles (@Repogles) June 26, 2025
Mamdani has also committed to stop immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) agents, which were assumed to be “from deporting our neighbors.” When Trump was asked about this at a press conference Tuesday, he said if Mamdani prevents ice agents from thwarting the deportation operation, “Yes, we have to arrest him.”
“We don't need communists in this country, but if we have them, I'll watch him very closely on behalf of the country,” Trump said, adding, “We'll send him money and everything he needs to run the government.”
Trump continues, claiming that Mamdani is illegally in the US, saying, “We're going to see everything.” The president has also expressed his support for current New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who is also a member of the Democratic Party.
How did the mum tick respond?
Mamdani posted a statement on his X account in response to Trump's comments on Tuesday.
“The US President threatened me to be arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in detention camps and deported, not because I broke the law, but because I refuse to terrorize our city,” Mamdani wrote in his statement.
Mamdani also called Trump's praise for Adams “not surprising,” saying that Eric Adams repeats this president at the moment when Maga Republicans are destroying the social safety net, trying to drive millions of New Yorkers out of medical care, and sacrificing billionaires' donors to abundance of families.
My statement on the threat of Donald Trump and his praise for Eric Adams, who the president “helped” legal accountability. https://t.co/m7pnct2dfs pic.twitter.com/ucyakmx4li
– Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@zohrankmamdani) July 1, 2025
What did the Trump administration say about Elon Musk?
While the billionaire owners of Tesla and SpaceX were once key aides to Trump and were key donors to last year's presidential election, Trump's “Big Beautiful Building” created a public rift between Trump and Musk.
Musk repeatedly denounced the bill online and threatened to form a new political party in response to the passage of the bill.
Musk believes he is affected by the financial bill narrowly passed by the Senate on Tuesday to end tax credits worth up to $7,500 for electric vehicle (EV) purchases starting September 30th.
In Monday's Truth Social Post, Trump wrote: “Without subsidies, Elon will likely need to close his shop and return to South Africa, there will be no more rocket launches, satellites, or electric vehicles.
“Maybe we should have doges good, hard work, look at this? A huge buck to be saved!!!” Trump added that Musk formed at the start of Trump's second administration and aimed to leave on May 30, in relation to the efficiency of the government, an advisory body aimed at increasing government efficiency and upgrading information technology.
When reporters asked Trump if he was going to deport Musk, he said, “We have to look. We may have to put a doge on Elon.”
On what basis can the United States revoke citizenship for its naturalized citizens?
In certain circumstances, naturalized American citizens may lose their status as citizens. This process is also known as denaturation.
This can occur when a naturalized citizen commits certain crimes, such as terrorism, war crimes, human rights violations, sexual crimes, or naturalization fraud.
On June 11, the Department of Justice issued a memo saying “prioritizes alteration” by enacting a civil lawsuit that “if naturalization is procured illegally or “unlawfully naturalized” by “concealing material facts” or intentionally misrepresentation, naturalization is procured.”
The memo added: “The civil division shall prioritize and pursue the process of alteration to its fullest extent in all cases permitted by law and supported by evidence.”
Naturalized citizens can also lose their citizenship if they commit treason against the United States, run for public office, or join the military abroad.
Recently, on June 13, the Justice Department announced that British citizen Elliot Duke, a collector and distributor convicted of child sexual abuse material, has been degenerated. In a news release, the Justice Department said Duke joined the U.S. Army in 2012 and began receiving and sending child sexual abuse materials online while serving in Germany. Duke did not list the crime in his naturalization application in 2013. He was convicted in 2014 of child pornography receipts and possession.
Will either musk or mum ticks degenerate?
Experts say that is not the case.
“The degeneration is limited to cases where the government is able to prove material fraud in its original application,” said Michael Kagan, a professor of law at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.
“It's rare and unlikely for musks and mamdani. This seems like irresponsible rhetoric designed to intimidate political enemies.”
What is the history of US degeneration?
The United States has revoked citizenship of citizens who have been naturalized on various occasions over the past decades.
In the first half of the 20th century, cases of alteration occurred more frequently in the first half of the 20th century, when the two world wars and the later Cold War with the Soviet Union were underway. Between 1926 and the mid-1940s, hundreds of people were transformed each year, according to political scientist Patrick Weill, author of Sovereign Citizens, published in 2017.
The US government frequently attempted altered citizens during two “red horrors” periods, from 1917 to 1920 and from 1947 to 1957, when fear of communism was particularly high in the United States. During this time, it was also extremely difficult to obtain US citizenship through naturalization.
Those who were degenerate at the time included communist and Nazi sympathizers. Two well-known cases are:
Emma Goldman, an anarchist activist born in Lithuania, was part of the Russian Empire at the time. Goldman moved to the United States in 1885. When World War I broke out, she opposed US involvement and military conscription. For this reason, she was jailed for two years in the Missouri State Jail in Jefferson City in 1917. By the time of her release, hysteria about communism took shape in the United States, and in 1919 she was perverted and deported to Soviet Russia. Paul Knauer was born in Germany and arrived in the United States in 1925. He became a citizen in 1937. In 1946, Nauer was degenerated for hiding his partnership with a German-American band, an organization believed to promote Nazi propaganda.
The trend of alteration slowed when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that it could not be deprived of their citizenship unless they met certain criteria of naturalization through fraud or committed serious crimes.
The ruling came at the end of the incident involving Bees Afroim, born in Poland and became a naturalized US citizen in 1926. The US government tried to revoke his citizenship after Afroim voted in the 1951 Israeli legislative election.
In awarding this, the Supreme Court repealed US federal law and said that if US citizens vote in foreign elections, they could lose their citizenship.
