In addition to committing what the State Department calls “potentially expatriating acts,” an individual must do so both “voluntarily and with the intention of relinquishing U.S. nationality.”
“The Department has a uniform administrative standard of evidence based on the premise that U.S. nationals intend to retain United States nationality when they perform potentially expatriating acts,” one official told Yahoo News on condition of anonymity.
This assumption is due to the fact that the U.S. government and Americans in general have historically placed a high value on the rights of citizenship. The rationale is that it’s a good thing that it should be extremely difficult for the government to strip someone of their citizenship.
But that could change, if some lawmakers get their way. Some, including Republican Senator Ted Cruz, have called for Americans who fight for IS to forfeit their citizenship — in part out of fear that such extremists could return to the United States and carry out attacks.
“Americans who choose to go to Syria or Iraq to fight with vicious ISIS terrorists are party to a terrorist organization committing horrific acts of violence, including beheading innocent American journalists who they have captured,” Cruz said in a statement Friday. “There can be no clearer renunciation of their citizenship in the United States.”