There are approximately 11 million immigration applications currently pending before the US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) and the standard processing times for immigration applications is upwards of five years in some cases. Some people are separated from their spouse and children stuck overseas until the USCIS adjudicates their application. There are 3.5 million people in removal proceedings, most of whom are seeking asylum. The backlogs were slowly shrinking under the Biden administration that was prioritizing certain cases and expediting others. Since Trump took office for the second time these backlogs have exploded in size.
Despite the backlog of cases pending the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has decided that it should start reviewing previously issued immigration benefits. A New York Times report confirmed that DHS has identified 50 green card holders they have put into removal proceedings and have investigated thousands more through the Department’s new investigative unit that has been established for exactly that purpose. The unit investigating permanent residents is under the Tactical Operations Division which also has a unit dedicated to investigating naturalized US citizens to determine if there is any way to bring a federal case to strip them of their citizenship. These resources could be used to get through the massive backlogs but are instead being used to re-adjudicate cases that have already been resolved in an effort to find ways to reverse the approvals and strip these people of their residency or citizenship.
The Tactical Operations Division
The division of DHS which is reviewing and re-vetting immigrants that have already been granted legal permanent residence is called the “Tactical Operations Division.” The Tactical Operations Division (TOD) has several units under its operation including LPR Operations–which is the unit specifically charged with investigating legal permanent residents, Denaturalization–a unit charged with investigating naturalized US citizens to determine if a case should be brought for denaturalization to strip them of their US citizenship, and Refugee Revetting–a unit which would be dedicated to reevaluating refugees who have been granted asylee or refugee status after extensive security screenings and background checks.
As of the first week of May, about 2,890 cases have been reviewed by the TOD. At least 80% of those cases did not warrant any further investigation. At least fifty of the residents investigated are now being put into removal proceedings because of things like arrests for domestic violence, driving under the influence, failure to disclose their membership to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and possession of drug paraphernalia, according to a spokesperson from the Department.
According to the New York Times, division director Daniel Andrade described the green card screening effort as an “LPR removal apparatus” in an internal email. The same New York Times reporting stated that there are around 40 immigration officers assigned to be working on these LPR reviews. The article also states that a person familiar with this initiative told them that tens of thousands more LPR’s have already been identified for review and that they intend on going through immigration applications of many more looking for potential errors or misrepresentations of fact than could be used to initiate removal proceedings against them to strip them of their legal permanent resident status.
Trump’s Attempts to Make Legal Permanent Residency Less Permanent
The Trump administration has been trying to grant itself much more authority when it comes to LPR’s and have been making legal moves to get the US Supreme Court to grant them the authority to treat LPR’s much more like temporary visa holders than immigrants with authorization to permanently reside in the United States.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Blanche v. Lau on April 22, 2026, and will soon be deciding whether LPR’s should be treated as “seeking admission” when they are reentering the United States after a brief trip abroad. The government would like to treat all LPR’s as seeking admission when they arrive in the US from a trip abroad so they can then charge them as being inadmissible and put them into removal proceedings. They further argue they have the authority not to admit a returning LPR and to instead “parole” them into the country and decide later if they are admissible.
Even Naturalized Citizens Aren’t Safe
The Trump administration is pushing the DOJ to pursue hundreds of denaturalization cases, in which US citizens born abroad are stripped of their citizenship based on questionable grounds, like errors on immigration forms or accusations of ties to groups that the Trump administration considers to be hostile to the US.
The New York Times has reported that the DOJ has already identified 384 foreign-born US citizens, whose citizenship it wants to revoke and will begin the process in the coming weeks. To put Trump’s plans into perspective, between 1990 and 2017, the US government filed just over 300 denaturalization cases — or an average of 11 per year. Trump started a denaturalization campaign his first time in office but it was not anywhere near the scale of what he plans on doing now.
There are roughly 24 million naturalized citizens living in the US and now even they have to be in fear of Trump trying to banish them from the country they call home.
note* The Tactical Operations Division (TOD) typically refers to a unit within the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), which operates under the Department of Justice, but this new division doing immigration investigations is under the Department of Homeland Security and is not connected to the DOJ’s TOD or associated with the US Marshals Service.