How many naturalized citizens were stripped of US citizenship (denaturalized) each year since 2005?

1. What the public record actually reports — aggregated counts, not annual tallies

Government and secondary reporting in the sources focus on periods and programmatic changes rather than producing an annual table. The Congressional Research Service and news outlets cite aggregated totals or averages (for example, 305 cases filed from 1990–2017 and an 11-per-year average in a 1990–2017 ILRC study) rather than listing denaturalizations for each calendar year since 2005 ^{[1] [2] [4]}.

2. Recent multi-year snapshots that journalists and advocates use

Advocates and scholars compiled recent snapshots that get cited widely: Hofstra law professor Irina Manta counted 168 denaturalization cases filed in federal court during President Trump’s first term (an average ≈42 per year) and 64 during the Biden term so far (≈16 per year) — numbers used by the National Immigration Forum and other organizations to illustrate a sharp recent uptick compared with the long-term average ^{[3] [2]}.

3. Why year-by-year counts are scarce in public sources

Available sources emphasize institutional changes (creation of USCIS and DOJ denaturalization units, policy memos) that affect referral and prosecution rates, not an annual statistical series. USCIS provides broad naturalization statistics and the CRS references USCIS and DOJ reporting, but the materials in this set do not include a public, consistent table of denaturalization filings or orders per year from 2005 onward ^{[5] [4] [6]}. Therefore an annual breakdown “2005, 2006, …” is not found in current reporting.

4. Context: enforcement cycles and policy drivers

All sources show denaturalization is shaped by enforcement priorities and institutional capacity. The Trump administration created specialized investigation and denaturalization units and identified thousands of potential cases, producing hundreds of filings in a short span; DOJ and USCIS memos in 2018–2025 further shifted priorities and revived aggressive pursuit of cases ^{[7] [3] [8]}. The June 11, 2025 DOJ memo elevating denaturalization to a top Civil Division priority is explicitly cited as likely to increase filings ^{[3] [9]}.

5. Competing interpretations in the record

Advocates and law firms draw different inferences: immigrant-rights organizations stress that denaturalization historically targeted war criminals and has been rare (the 1990–2017 305-case total supports this claim), while policy analysts and some DOJ-aligned pieces argue renewed enforcement is justified to address fraud, national-security risks, and criminality ^{[2] [4] [3]}. The sources document both the rarity historically and the sharp acceleration under specific policies — presenting two legitimate, competing frames ^{[1] [3]}.

6. What numbers you can cite reliably from these sources

You can cite: 305 denaturalization cases filed from 1990–2017 (≈11 per year) from the ILRC/reporting ^{[1] [2]}; 168 cases filed during Trump’s first term (≈42/year) and 64 during Biden’s term to date per Irina Manta and groups summarizing her work ^{[3] [2]}. These are the clearest numeric anchors in the set of sources ^{[3] [2] [1]}.

7. How to get the precise year-by-year counts (next steps)

Available sources do not include a year-by-year public spreadsheet. To compile exact annual counts, one would need to: (a) obtain DOJ Civil Division and U.S. Attorneys’ data on civil denaturalization filings and outcomes by year; (b) obtain USCIS referral numbers and DOJ filing dates; or (c) rely on academic case compilations (like Manta’s) that list filings by date. The CRS and USCIS pages referenced here point to agency data but do not themselves publish a full per-year table in the documents supplied ^{[4] [5] [6]}.

8. Bottom line for readers

There is clear evidence in the reporting that denaturalization was rare historically (≈11/year through 2017) and that the Trump administration and subsequent DOJ memos produced a substantial increase in filings (168 in Trump’s first term; 64 in Biden’s term so far), but the precise count for each calendar year since 2005 is not provided in these sources. Anyone asserting exact annual totals must either produce agency-level year-by-year data or cite a comprehensive case-by-case academic database — neither of which appears in the sources reviewed here ^{[1] [3] [2]}.