Citizens Without Citizenship
What makes you a citizen?
Hannah Arendt was stateless for 18 years. At the end of her limbo she wrote her first book, The Origins of Totalitarianism. Part of the book is a response to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that came out of World War 2. She argues that those essential rights are really only enforceable through the nation-state after the war exposed how fragile those rights are. Millions of people were removed from statehood as their countries were taken over, removed from maps, and consolidated into territory that no longer treated the people living there as citizens. Even those whose borders didn’t change around them were stripped of citizenship. In Nazi Germany that included communists and Jews. Arendt notes how crucial this was in the perpetration of the Holocaust, as “the Nazis started their extermination of Jews by first depriving them of all legal status.” Revocation of citizenship opens the door to abuses of an individual’s human rights. The association between stripping citizenship and Nazi Germany is so strong that it may have dissuaded nations from doing it through the back half of the 20th century, but as authoritarianism rises across the globe, the practice is rearing its head.
On Tuesday, the President opened the door to stripping citizenship from one of his biggest political opponents. New York City’s next mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is an American citizen. He came to the US as a child, grew up here, and was naturalized in 2018. He has also been a fierce critic of Donald Trump. His upset victory in the Dem primary has exposed his charming anti-authoritarian and pro-socialism messaging to people across the country. Even before his win he was subjected to hateful Islamaphobic rhetoric that aimed to undermine his legal status, much in the way birtherism did for Obama. A NYC Council Member made a “deport Zohran” meme that was shared widely enough that my friends who are not on the cesspool formally known as Twitter saw it. The threat escalated in the wake of his win, as the NY Young Republicans echoed calls for his deportation and Rep. Andy Ogles sent a letter to AG Bondi asking her to denaturalize Mamdani. On Monday the White House Press Secretary said the claims made by Ogles “should be investigated.” And finally, straight from the horse’s mouth, the chief executive suggested he was here “illegally” and threatened to arrest him.
This step towards totalitarianism came, aptly, after a visit to a new “congregation facility” for immigrants. Those are Steve Bannon’s words but it would be tough to think of a better euphemism for “concentration camp.” Just take a look for yourself - it really is difficult to see images of it without thinking of the barracks where millions were subjected to countless atrocities less than 100 years ago. To have our leaders showing off this facility that will house people who came here legally and are being stripped of their status is appalling. They seem to relish the cruelty of it all.
This comes in the midst of passage of the Big Beautiful Bill whose horrific impacts would take multiple newsletters to detail. The bill mostly consists of cutting government services and giving tax breaks to the rich but one agency is getting an influx of cash: ICE. Their $10 billion annual budget is being supplemented by an extra $100 billion over Trump’s term. Nearly half of that is for detention facilities like the one in Florida. The other half will go to enforcement actions, meaning more masked men in plainclothes arresting people with no warrants. Some like Mahmoud Khalil will be freed from their wrongful detention when a light is shown on them. Many more will not be. The administration is intent on using the power of government to cage and dehumanize people and Congress is providing the funding for them to do it.
A few weeks ago, the DOJ announced they would be “prioritizing denaturalization.” In the waning days of the last administration they established a Denaturalization Section within the department that was deprioritized as Covid hit in full force a month later. Now with 4 years of planning behind them and 4 years of execution ahead we should take them at their word. They intend to create a second class of citizens, those who are naturalized rather than natural born. Anyone not granted birthright citizenship will have to live in fear of their rights being taken away by an administration willing to deport people for writing op-eds or attending protests contrary to government policy. While the US has pursued denaturalizations at a larger scale in the past, particularly as part of the Red Scare, it was incredibly rare from the 1960s until the 2010s when Obama began Operation Janus and the Trump Administration plans to ramp up those efforts. While the Supreme Court helped put an end to the practice during the McCarthy era, this iteration of the court seems more willing to allow citizenship status to become a tool of political repression.
While the Administration pushed to strip more people of citizenship, the Supreme Court is expanding the group of Americans who may have to live under threat of statelessness. On Trump’s first day in office he issues an executive order ending birthright citizenship. This is clearly against the text of the 14th Amendment and so District judges blocked the order from taking effect. Now the Supreme Court has ruled that nationwide injunctions are an overreach of Judicial authority and have allowed the birthright citizenship ban to proceed in the 28 states that did not challenge Trump’s order. There is a 30-day delay but as it stands a child born in Texas on August 1st will not be automatically granted US citizenship. The Court did not rule on the constitutionality of the order, but to say that courts are committing judicial overreach when they are trying to stop executive overreach is basically giving up its own power to slow authoritarianism unless those sacred nine individuals weigh in on the matter. There are larger implications here about checks and balances and the rewriting of the Constitution by executive pen, but as it relates to citizenship this is also a major win for the hard-right. For an administration pushing for maximum deportation numbers, any new avenues to deny people their rights as citizens and place them in a more “deportable” bucket is more than welcomed.
Each one of these on its own would be worrying signs of authoritarianism. Taken together they represent a very real and dark turn towards totalitarianism that Arendt warned of 80 years ago. The Millers and Noems leading our immigration policy are trying to deprive millions of Americans not just of their rights, but of “a condition of complete rightlessness.” We have allowed these oppressive forms of government to take root because we have been convinced that people can be made “illegal” and thus exempt from the rights that we claim to be “unalienable.” It was only a matter of time before this revocation of rights was applied not just to criminals but to “criminals” that are merely in opposition to the government.
NYC’s Mayor is unlikely to actually be denaturalized, arrested by cash-flush masked men, thrown in a cage in the Everglades, made a citizen of no nation, and then sent to a foreign land. Such blatant authoritarianism may be unpalatable even to MAGA loyalists. But that exact situation will happen to New Yorkers who are not the mayor, who are our neighbors, our fellow subway commuters, our co-workers. As Democratic Party leaders waste their cable news hits falsely attacking the Mayor for support for terrorism that he never gave, the Administration will feel more emboldened. They may even try their luck deporting a political opponent. The possibility of it happening will linger for another four years. Anyone who believes in democracy must recognize these are tangible and active threats to our republic, and be prepared to stand up in defense of it.
I think Hannah Arendt was brilliant. (And so are you❤️)