One could easily assume that if someone is adopted by US citizens, they would automatically become a citizen, too. But a complicated legal system, the fraught history of international adoption, and the current Administration’s rhetoric around citizenship and immigration have caused concern for many adoptees. Are they at risk of being deported or losing citizenship?...

There are a number of reasons why so many adoptees lack citizenship, ranging from neglectful and exploitative adoption agencies, to adoptive parents who failed to understand that naturalization and adoption were two separate processes (until the passage of the Child Citizenship Act in 2000, all adopted children were still required to apply for citizenship), to an adoptive country that “wedged foreign adoptions into a system created for domestic ones.” As a result, dozens of adoptees have been deported in recent years.

The Child Citizenship Act was created to rectify this issue, granting automatic citizenship to future adoptees as well as those under 18 at the time of the law’s passage. But for adoptees born before 1983, there was no such luck, leaving tens of thousands of people undocumented...

LWVUS Blog / Last Updated: March 5, 2026
By: Lilly McGee