There are growing concerns that the DHS effort is more about creating fear and less about successfully stripping citizenship. Even if Americans swept up in investigations aren’t prosecuted or convicted, the process takes a financial and emotional toll; they’d have to hire lawyers and produce documents.

Margy O’Herron, a senior fellow in the liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, said the mere threat of denaturalization creates real terror.

“Citizens are afraid that if they do or say something the government doesn’t like — even if those things are lawful and protected by the Constitution — they will be a target,” she said.

Sounds likely to me.