Republicans test a new red line: Denaturalization

The idea of threatening the immigration status of people not born in America has grown increasingly prominent since Trump retook the White House.

After former Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk exited the administration, the right-wing populist Steve Bannon called for “a formal investigation of his immigration status.” Some Democrats, too, asked whether the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who first lived in America on a student visa, was a true citizen.

“Mr. Musk has [been] here just 22 years, and he’s a citizen of three countries,” Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, said at an anti-DOGE press conference. “With the damage he’s doing here when push comes to shove, which country is he loyal to? South Africa, Canada, or the United States?”

But Democrats couldn’t act on those questions, and the administration could. Since January, the State Department has revoked hundreds of student visas from noncitizens, some because of their criticism of the US’ foreign policy and its support for Israel.

That effort started with the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder who had helped organize Gaza war protests at Columbia University.

“No one has a right to a student visa,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained after Khalil was taken into custody. “No one has a right to a green card.”

Fully-fledged citizens like Mamdani have not been immune from this scrutiny.

Mamdani had rallied outside the courthouse when Khalil was detained, and shared a stage with him on Saturday. Suddenly, critics who supported the Ogles effort to denaturalize him were scouring his tweets and public statements for potential fodder to link him to activities that DOJ could scrutinize — from rap lyrics highlighted by Ogles, to the democratic socialist’s praise for a Communist Party mayoral candidate in India.

“Denaturalization of U.S. citizens is part of the Trump playbook to attack all legal immigration,” said Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, an immigrant from India who was naturalized in 2000. “It is completely outrageous and flies in the face of the laws of this country.”

Ogles, a second-term legislator elected after Republican redistricting created a safe GOP seat in Nashville, has made more news than laws.

Last year, Ogles proposed legislation that would have automatically revoked the student visas of foreign students protesting Israel’s war in Gaza. In January, he proposed a constitutional amendment that would have allowed Donald Trump, but not Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, to seek a third term.

One week later, the DOJ dropped a campaign finance investigation into the reelected congressman.

Ogles’ June 26 letter to DOJ about Mamdani did not require anything of Congress. In it, he suggested that the agency should investigate Mamdani over a 2017 rap song lyric praising five men convicted of funneling money to Hamas (“My love to the Holy Land Five”), and it should probe whether he “engaged in non-public forms of support” that should have been disclosed in his citizenship application.

Ogles and his supporters have looked for other ways to challenge Mamdani’s citizenship. In a Newsmax interview, Ogles suggested that Mamdani’s membership in the Democratic Socialists of America “would have disqualified him,” because DSA was “a communist organization.” If the effort failed, he said, it was still worth trying.

“Even if we can’t prove or dot the Is and cross the Ts and get this guy on this, it creates the template for these other individuals who’ve come to this country,” said Ogles to Newsmax. “They’re sleeper cells. They want to undermine our way of life.”

“We stand with Zohran and against the xenophobia and Islamophobia of Representative Ogles and the MAGA movement,′ said Ashik Siddique, the co-chair of DSA’s national political committee. Some communist organizations, which the candidate doesn’t belong to, had been critical of Mamdani. DSA, which he does belong to, has defended him.

“Representative Ogles is trying to do to Zohran what the authoritarian Trump administration has done across the country, from activists for Palestine like Mahmoud Khalil in New York, to migrants in Los Angeles,” said Siddique. “Only democratic socialism can stop this rising fascism, and we call on all Americans to reject this hatred and division. Zohran’s campaign shows a politics of hope and inclusivity can beat a politics of fear, and that’s just what we’ll do.”

Many Democrats, inside and outside of New York, are still wrestling with how to talk about Mamdani, because few endorse all of his views and statements. The Ogles letter made it a little easier for them. The party is opposed to deporting or denaturalizing people who are living legally in America over their political opinions.

But Republicans are increasingly comfortable endorsing that. In February, Texas Rep. Brandon Gill told donors in a fundraising email that “the time has come to arrest and deport” Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, a refugee from Somalia who attained US citizenship 25 years ago. Democrats didn’t take any real steps toward denaturalizing Musk, but when they questioned his loyalty, Republicans noticed: Asking if an immigrant truly had a right to be here was now, technically, bipartisan.

Since joining the House two years ago, Ogles has passed just one bill, the Liberty in Laundry Act, which did not make it through the Senate. But majorities of Congress don’t need to agree with what Ogles is asking now. The DOJ could probe Mamdani’s citizenship application on its own. If it declines to, it would suggest an outer limit on who could be targeted for denaturalization — i.e., that the administration would not essentially void an election by revoking a candidate’s citizenship.

If the DOJ does probe Mamdani, it would be applying to him the scrutiny and standards already being felt by noncitizens seeking visas, as it increasingly vets them for criticism of Israel or support for socialism. I’ve seen some armchair sleuths asking for the administration to involve the Communist Control Act to get rid of Mamdani, even though courts have found that Cold War-era law is non-justiciable. But the theme of Trump’s second term is that when experts say a given action is unconstitutional, or won’t work, or would backfire, the White House tries it anyway.