In March, Americans witnessed just how broken our naturalization process has become. Within the span of just 11 days, the nation experienced four terrorist attacks: mass shootings at a Texas bar and at Old Dominion University in Virginia, an attempted bombing in New York City, and an assault on a synagogue in Michigan.

The terrorists in Texas, Virginia, and Michigan were naturalized U.S. citizens. And the New York City bombers were the children of naturalized citizens.

In response to inquiries about these incidents, a spokesman for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reiterated that it “has a zero-tolerance policy for anyone who lies or misrepresents themselves during the naturalization process.”

That zero-tolerance policy is the right approach, but these recent attacks point to a stark reality: our naturalization process has erroneously granted the priceless privilege of American citizenship to foreigners who never accepted America, never embraced our values, and never intended to live as loyal members of our national community.

Naturalization is a long-standing, time-honored American tradition. But it is not a clerical formality or a routine application for benefits. Citizenship is not a property interest—it’s a covenant.

To become an American citizen is not only about gaining access to various social, economic, and political privileges, but it is also—and more importantly—about entering into a solemn bond with one’s fellow citizens, the sovereign people of the United States. It confers extraordinary rights, but it also demands obligations: loyalty, gratitude, humility, and fidelity to the nation and its people.

Because U.S. citizenship carries such weight, current law requires naturalization applicants to demonstrate that, among other things, they are 1) persons of good moral character, 2) attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and 3) well-disposed to the good order and happiness of our nation. The three naturalized-citizen terrorists clearly never met these substantive requirements.

And the problem extends beyond terrorism. Naturalized citizens have been convicted of rampant welfare fraud, as seen in the egregious Feeding Our Future fraud scandal in Minnesota. They have joined drug cartels designated as foreign terrorist organizations. They have committed aggravated felonies. Some have even committed espionage against the United States. These cases are flashing red warning lights that the federal government has promiscuously extended citizenship to individuals who should never have been granted it in the first place.

Fortunately, the second Trump Administration has taken steps to address these issues. On the front end, USCIS has implemented regulatory reforms to restore rigorous vetting to prevent unworthy individuals from gaining citizenship. And on the back end, the Department of Justice has increased its efforts to revoke the citizenship of those who fraudulently obtained it.

The state of statutory and case law surrounding both naturalization and denaturalization unfortunately makes those tasks exceedingly difficult.

In the 1960s, the Warren Court issued several decisions that severely curtailed denaturalization. It ruled that naturalized citizens cannot be involuntarily stripped of their citizenship purely based on post-naturalization actions. So under current Supreme Court precedent, denaturalization generally cannot serve as a punishment for a crime. Worse still, the Court ruled that even after a person is denaturalized, actions taken while being a citizen on paper are not grounds for deportation. This means that even when the government can secure denaturalization, it may not be able to deport the individual.

The resulting legal regime has effectively neutered the government’s ability to protect the integrity of the naturalization system through denaturalization and deportation. It lets bad actors exploit our naturalization system, and then allows them to hide behind the very thing they fraudulently obtained—citizenship.

However, even though the Supreme Court has prohibited denaturalization and deportation as a direct punishment for post-naturalization conduct, it has upheld denaturalization statutes that use acts committed within a few years after naturalization as evidence that the person in question never truly met the requirements for citizenship. The Court has emphasized that no foreigner

has the slightest right to naturalization unless all statutory requirements are complied with; and every certificate of citizenship must be treated as granted upon condition that the government may challenge it…and demand its cancellation unless issued in accordance with such requirements.

That means that citizenship “is illegally procured” if Congress’s “prescribed qualifications have no existence in fact” at naturalization, which makes intuitive sense. For example, if someone joins a terrorist organization shortly after becoming a United States citizen, then he clearly misrepresented material facts during the naturalization process.

My recently introduced Stop Citizenship Abuse and Misrepresentation (SCAM) Act builds on this approach. The SCAM Act expands the evidence the government can use to prove an individual did not meet the statutory requirements of citizenship at the time of naturalization. It allows the government to use the following acts as prima facie and sufficient evidence in a denaturalization proceeding that a naturalized citizen illegally procured his or her citizenship:

• Committing an act as part of a substantial fraud against a federal, state, or local government welfare or assistance program within 10 years of naturalization.

• Affiliating with a designated foreign terrorist organization within 10 years of naturalization.

• Engaging in an act as part of an aggravated felony or espionage within 10 years of naturalization.

Furthermore, the SCAM Act would eliminate the absurd precedent that crimes committed when someone held U.S. citizenship under false pretenses are not deportable offenses. As a result, anyone denaturalized under the SCAM Act would also be deported.

The SCAM Act rests on a simple proposition: citizenship obtained by fraud is illegitimate since it breaks the covenant of citizenship. Anyone who commits substantial welfare fraud, an aggravated felony, espionage, or affiliates with a terrorist organization shortly after becoming a naturalized citizen never met the qualifications for citizenship in the first place. Instead, that person concealed or misrepresented material facts about himself to falsely claim he was a person of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well-disposed to the good order and happiness of our nation.

The sad fact is that immigrants with bad intent have scammed our vulnerable, antiquated naturalization process for decades. They have unjustly taken advantage of our country to gain the unparalleled privilege of U.S. citizenship, robbed the public fisc, and endangered our safety, security, and domestic tranquility. The fact that law-abiding Americans who work hard every day and follow the rules are paying for this with their taxes is a national outrage.

By expanding and clarifying the grounds to denaturalize and deport those who abused the system to gain American citizenship falsely and illegally, the SCAM Act would help restore integrity to the naturalization process. American citizenship is a covenant between the people of this nation, and when it is obtained through fraud, it is null and void.