How many denaturalization cases did the Justice Department win between 2000 and 2024, and what were the outcomes?
Executive summary
A reliable, source-backed tally of how many denaturalization cases the Justice Department “won” between 2000 and 2024 is not available in the reporting provided: DOJ public statements and advocacy/legal analyses describe wins, priorities, and individual successful cases, but no consolidated, authoritative count covering 2000–2024 is provided in these sources [1] [2]. The Department and commentators do report high success rates in certain periods and describe typical outcomes—court orders revoking naturalization, case dismissals, or settlements—but those statements either post‑date 2024 or do not list a year-by-year win total [3] [4] [5] [6].
1. What the user is actually asking and what can be answered from available documents
The user seeks a numeric count of DOJ denaturalization “wins” over a 25‑year span and the legal outcomes of those wins; the available documents include DOJ press releases and advocacy FOIA requests but do not contain a single, aggregated DOJ-produced table enumerating wins from 2000–2024, so a definitive, source-cited numeric answer cannot be produced from these materials alone [1] [7].
2. What the Justice Department and its advocates have publicly claimed about success rates
The Department has in public materials and allied outlets framed denaturalization litigation as largely successful in the hands of the Office of Immigration Litigation, with language stating that OIL “already has achieved great success … winning 95 percent of the time,” although that phrasing appears in materials dated after 2024 and is quoted in legal‑community summaries [3] [4]. Because that 95% figure appears in documents and commentary published around 2025, it cannot be taken as a contemporaneous, independently verifiable statistic covering 2000–2024 without access to DOJ case logs [3] [4].
3. What counts as a “win” and the typical outcomes in denaturalization litigation
Denaturalization actions are civil lawsuits that seek revocation of a Certificate of Naturalization; a “win” for DOJ typically takes the form of a federal court judgment revoking naturalization and canceling the certificate, but outcomes also include negotiated consent orders, litigated judgments, and sometimes reversals or remands on appeal—courts require high standards of proof (“clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence”) before depriving someone of citizenship [5] [6] [2]. Individual DOJ press releases describe judgments revoking citizenship—as in the Operation Janus-related revocation announced in early 2025—but those are examples rather than components of a comprehensive 2000–2024 tally [5].
4. What independent reporting and public‑records efforts reveal about disclosure gaps
Journalists and public‑interest groups have tried to quantify denaturalization activity: FOIA requests filed through MuckRock sought DOJ records on denaturalization filings for 2017–2024, signaling that the data are not transparently published and may require formal records requests to assemble [1]. Advocacy groups such as American Oversight have documented DOJ internal moves to create a denaturalization section but likewise rely on records production rather than a public summary table [7]. Legal observers note that the absolute number of denaturalization cases historically has been small—“in the tens” per year—so any 25‑year total is likely in the low hundreds rather than thousands, but precise aggregation for 2000–2024 is not furnished in these sources [2].
5. Bottom line and how to get a definitive answer
Based on the provided reporting, a definitive count of DOJ denaturalization wins from 2000–2024 cannot be stated: DOJ statements tout high win rates in certain periods and press releases document individual revocations, but no consolidated, source‑cited sum for that 25‑year span is available in these documents [3] [5] [1]. To produce the exact number and a breakdown of outcomes (final judgments revoking naturalization, consent decrees, dismissals, appellate reversals), the appropriate next steps are to obtain DOJ Civil Division / Office of Immigration Litigation case logs or responsive FOIA production (as sought in the MuckRock request) or to compile every DOJ press release and federal court docket entry for denaturalization suits filed during 2000–2024 [1] [7] [6].