Trump threatens to revoke citizenship of naturalized immigrants convicted of fraud

In his winding speech today, Donald Trump threatened to “reverse citizenship of any naturalized immigrant from Somalia or anywhere else who is convicted of defrauding our citizens”.

He spent a portion of his remarks in Detroit today heaping invective on the Somali community throughout the country, particularly in Minnesota and Maine.

The president repeated xenophobic remarks about Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar – who came to the US as a refugee from Somalia when she was 12, and became a US citizen at 17.

“She lives in Somalia. They don’t have a government, they don’t have a military, they don’t have police, they don’t have anything. All they have is murder and robbing ships,” Trump said today. “She comes here and she tells us about our constitution … I guess she’s she’s a total scam artist.”

A reminder that earlier today, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that it would be ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somali immigrants.

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A video released by TMZ shows President Donald Trump raising the middle finger during an appearance at a Ford plant in Detroit today, where he appears to be responding to a worker in the crowd yelling at him.

Trump was touring the Ford F-150 plant ahead of a speech at the Detroit Economic Club when someone began shouting at him from the floor, the video shows. The full remark is unclear, though the TMZ video appears to capture the words “pedophile protector.” Trump is shown returning an insult.

White House communications director, Steven Cheung, said in a statement: “A lunatic was wildly screaming expletives in a complete fit of rage, and the President gave an appropriate and unambiguous response.”

The worker’s remarks appear to reference Trump’s past association with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

CBS News’ Tony Dokoupil asked President Donald Trump what message he would send the father of Renee Nicole Good, the woman who was fatally shot in Minneapolis by a federal agent last week. Her father is a “big supporter” of Trump, according to Dokoupil.

“I want to say to the father that I love all our people. They can be on the other side,” Trump said during an interview with CBS News.

“I would bet you that she under normal circumstances, she was a very solid, wonderful person, but her actions were pretty tough,” he added.

President Donald Trump called Jerome Powell a “lousy Fed chairman” during an interview with Tony Dokoupil on CBS Evening News.

“He’s either corrupt or incompetent,” Trump added.

When asked whether the justice department’s investigation into Powell was retaliation, he said, “I can’t help what it looks like.”

The Trump administration designated three Muslim Brotherhood chapters as “terrorist” groups, claiming they “pose a threat to the United States” and provided “material support to Hamas,” according to a statement by the state department.

The state department designated the Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization”, and also labeled the group’s leader, Muhammad Fawzi Taqqosh, as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist.”

The treasury department also designated the Egyptian and Jordanian chapters in the latter category, accusing them of supporting Hamas.

Foreign nationals who are representatives or members of a designated organization are barred from entering the United States and may be subject to deportation, according to US law. The treasury department can require US financial institutions to freeze the group’s assets and block any transactions involving funds or property under their control.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned that the justice department’s investigation into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell could push inflation and interest rates higher, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Dimon said that “anything that chips away” at the central bank’s independence “is not a good idea.”

“I want to say that I don’t agree with everything the Fed has done,” Dimon said. “I do have enormous respect for Jay Powell the man.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is carrying out what it calls its “largest DHS operation in history,” deploying hundreds of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents on top of the thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, CBS News reports.

A DHS official told the news outlet that there are currently 800 CBP agents and 2,000 Ice officials in the Minneapolis area as tensions have risen in recent days.

“This is the largest DHS operation in history,” the official told CBS News.

On Tuesday, students in Minnesota held walkouts to protest ongoing Ice operations, while federal officers dropped tear gas and sprayed eye irritants at activists in other parts of the state, the Associated Press reports.

The surge comes on the same day several federal prosecutors in the state and Washington DC resigned in protest over the justice department’s decision not to hold a civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis.

My colleague Lucy Campbell just shared an excerpt from CBS’s interview with Donald Trump, slated to be aired later today, in our dedicated Iran live blog:

Donald Trump has said the United States would take “very strong action” if the Iranian government starts hanging protesters, but did not elaborate on what those actions would be.

“I haven’t heard about the hanging. If they hang them, you’re going to see some things … We will take very strong action if they do such a thing,” Trump told CBS News in Dearborn, Michigan.

Trump said he was aware a “pretty substantial number” of people have been killed over the more than two weeks of demonstrations, and reiterated that “there’s a lot of help on the way” for Iranian citizens in “different forms” including economic assistance.

He also mentioned the US airstrikes last year targeting three of Iran’s nuclear facilities to CBS News, though he didn’t give any further specifics.

When asked what his end game is in Iran, the US president said:

The end game is to win. I like winning.

And asked what “winning” means, he reeled off a list of military operations from his first and second terms, adding:

We don’t want to see what’s happening in Iran happen. And you know, if they want to have protests, that’s one thing, when they start killing thousands of people, and now you’re telling me about hanging — we’ll see how that works out for them. It’s not going to work out good.

Updated at 22.00 GMT

Chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, reacted to Donald Trump’s claims on the economy earlier today in Michigan, including that inflation has been “defeated” and that “grocery prices are starting to go rapidly down,” despite data showing US consumer prices rose 2.7% annually in December.

“Under Donald Trump’s failed economic policies, Michiganders are seeing their paychecks get tighter, and jobs disappear. And today, Trump tried to gaslight Michigan families once again — but they weren’t fooled — because new polling shows that Donald Trump is disastrously unpopular in Michigan,” Martin said.

He added: “While Donald Trump keeps choosing billionaires and gilded ballrooms over the needs of hardworking Michigan families, Democrats won’t stop fighting to lower families’ costs and keep health care prices in check.”

Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, responded to a lawsuit filed by senator Mark Kelly yesterday seeking to block the secretary’s attempt to strip the military veteran of his rank and pension in retaliation for speaking out against the Trump administration.

“‘Captain’ Kelly knows exactly what he did, and that he will be held to account,” Hegseth said Tuesday in a post on X, reposting Kelly’s remarks about the lawsuit. “Thats why he’s so worried and cranky.”

Updated at 21.27 GMT

Here’s a recap of the day so far

In a winding speech in Detroit, billed to tout the Trump administration’s affordability achievements, the president veered off-course on several occasions. Throughout his remarks he threatened to “reverse citizenship of any naturalized immigrant who is convicted of defrauding our citizens”, falsely claimed that grocery prices and rent are down, bemoaned the embattled Fed chair, reaffirmed to protesting Iranians that “help is on its way”, and said that he would stop federal funding to sanctuary cities.
Oversight committee chair James Comer said that he will move to hold former president Bill Clinton in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify as part of the ongoing investigation into the Jeffrey Epstein case. This comes legal representatives for both Bill and Hillary Clinton sent an eight-page letter to Comer notifying him that they would not comply with the subpoenas compelling them to appear before the committee to deliver in-person testimony.
Prior to journeying to Detroit, Donald Trump has told the people of Minnesota to “FEAR NOT”, as a “DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING” to the North Star state. In a post on Truth Social, the president slammed the ongoing protests against federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, after the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good last week.
The US supreme court on Tuesday appeared poised to uphold laws banning transgender girls and women from competing in female sports in two conservative states, in a landmark legal battle that could carry profound implications for trans rights across US society. During oral arguments on two cases of trans students who sued over Republican-supported laws in West Virginia and Idaho that barred them from girls sports, one member of the court’s conservative majority after another voiced skepticism about the students’ cases.
According to the latest data by the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), about 800,000 fewer people have enrolled in Affordable Care Act healthcare plans compared to this time last year. This comes as the threat of spikes in monthly premiums looms – short of Congress passing legislation to extend Covid-era subsidies.

It’s important to note that there are fairly narrow criteria when it comes to the process of “denaturalization”.

For example, a person would have been found guilty of committing fraud while applying to become a citizen. Namely, if they concealed that they were part of a terrorist organization, or totalitarian party.

A Somali-born US citizen who has committed financial or welfare fraud, would be subject to the same due process as any American, and – if convicted – they would be subject to fines or prison time.

Their citizenship, however, would not be revoked.

Updated at 20.50 GMT