It’s not just Ilhan Omar — Trump is targeting U.S. citizenship for all immigrants

The government raid on Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington home last week is yet another example of the president abusing his authority to go after his political foes. It also shows how the vile anti-immigrant sentiment that used to mold the fringe of the American tapestry now sits at the heart of power.

The Trump administration is reportedly trying to strip Omar of her U.S. citizenship. The Minnesota Democrat and her family came to the United States as Somali refugees in the 1990s and she acquired citizenship after her father was naturalized in 2000.

This is not the first time that Omar has been targeted. According to the Washington Post, officials scrutinized her record in 2019 and found no evidence of fraud. Has anything changed in the meantime?

The biggest difference is that since Donald Trump returned to the White House, the government has not only engaged in mass deportation efforts of undocumented immigrants, but it has also waged war against unquestionably legal immigrants like Omar. While actions by immigration agents and excessive use of force have rightfully captured the headlines, the bureaucratic gutting of legal immigration has only grown.

Last year, I called the administration’s actions on this front insidious, but while that still captures the kind of damage being done to America’s soul, there is now nothing subtle or secret about what’s happening. It is all playing out in broad daylight even as it’s pitched to the darkest corners of society.

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Take this recent missive on X by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security:

“Net negative migration for the first time in HALF a CENTURY. Americans are amassing victories NEVER seen before thanks to President Trump. We will continue to grow our efforts to fulfill the mandate given to this administration.”

Given how close the election was, you can object to the word mandate, but broadly speaking, voters did support Trump’s proposals. The only problem is that most people were concerned about a sense of unchecked immigration at the southern border, they did not vote for slamming shut the golden door.

Yet that’s what the Trump administration has proudly done.

Accompanying DHS’s social media post was an image that trumpeted the government’s “victories” so far. These include 250,000 visas revoked, a 94% rate of asylum denial, travel banned from 39 countries, and naturalizations down by 75%.

They probably ran out of room, but they could have added refugee resettlement, which has been virtually frozen under Trump or reserved for white South Africans (which always reads like the punchline to a Dave Chappelle joke).

All of these pathways to enter the U.S. involve legal immigration. And that’s the kind we want, right?

Whether from an economic or moral standpoint — or both — Americans should be concerned about those numbers. The United States’ economic and cultural success, why it grew to be the envy of the world, is intrinsically tied to its amalgamation of immigrants.

For many, becoming a citizen has long been seen as the pinnacle of the immigrant experience. That naturalizations have plummeted by 75% under the Trump administration is deeply troubling. That DHS sees this as a positive is deeply disturbing.

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A Bloomberg Law analysis found that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services decided around 71,000 naturalization cases between April and June, compared with around 265,000 during the same period in 2025. A review of data going back to 2017 showed the agency is at its lowest level of naturalization decisions and that the rate of denials has more than doubled over the last year.

As USCIS under Trump abandons its mission to welcome immigrants under the fairness of law and becomes another anti-immigrant obstruction point, there have also been significant delays in processing applications and in the scheduling of oath ceremonies that make citizenship official.

If you still need another example of how the administration is disregarding the law, the U.S. State Department was ordered Wednesday to reinstate the diversity visa lottery, which distributes permanent residency visas, known as green cards, to around 55,000 people every year.

A federal judge found the administration failed to open the program’s registration period this year and then shamelessly claimed it was too late to do so. The lottery has benefited more than 1.7 million immigrants since its inception under President George H.W. Bush.

You wouldn’t know it from the government’s priorities, but most Americans continue to support immigration. Recent polling by centrist group Third Way found that voters are overwhelmingly looking for an approach that “combines order with opportunity.”

Today, under the Trump administration, the system offers neither.