Expulsion is an act by a public authority to remove a person or persons against his or her will from the territory of that state. A successful expulsion of a person by a country is called a deportation. A country cannot deport its own citizens, as citizens have an absolute right to remain in their native country. On rare occasions, when citizenship was obtained on false grounds, an individual may have their citizenship divested and can be deported. Democratic countries prohibit the exile or deportation of native-born citizens.
Legal limits on deportation of citizens
States may deport individuals who were once recognised as citizens in certain limited situations.
Denaturalisation occurs when a naturalised citizen is found to have obtained citizenship through misrepresentation, including concealing their criminal history; their citizenship may then be revoked, after which they can be deported.
Mistaken deportations, though illegal, have also occurred, with countries deporting their own citizens after wrongfully identifying them as foreign nationals. Such cases often arise due to administrative errors, outdated records, or lack of documentation to prove citizenship status.
In the context of dual citizenship, some countries, such as the United Kingdom, have the power to divest a person of citizenship if they are a dual national and their presence is deemed ‘not conducive to the public good,’ including allegations of terrorist connections. Since the individual retains another nationality and is not rendered stateless, they may subsequently be deported.
Extradition and deportation are distinct legal processes. A country may send its own citizens to another country against their will through extradition if they are wanted for a crime committed abroad, but this is not considered deportation.
There have also been cases of administrative errors, where citizens were wrongfully deported due to misidentification, outdated records, or lack of documentation establishing their legal status.
Finally, in rare circumstances, a citizen may lose their status through expatriating acts performed with the intention of relinquishing citizenship, such as serving in a foreign military that is at war with their home country.
Banishment and political exile
Authoritarian regimes have often exiled dissidents by stripping them of citizenship and subsequently expelling them.
Bahrain and Nicaragua, for instance, have been widely criticised for depriving citizens of their nationality on vague grounds such as “public good.” In 2013, a court ruling in the Dominican Republic retroactively stripped citizenship from approximately 200,000 people of Haitian descent, rendering them vulnerable to deportation. Similarly, Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law denied citizenship to the Rohingya population, facilitating their mass expulsion.
‘Third-country’ transfers
Some governments have adopted policies that transfer individuals wrongly identified as non-citizens to third countries. The United States and Australia, for instance, have implemented measures allowing migrants to be sent to countries with which they have no prior ties, raising significant human rights concerns. Although these policies are formally directed at non-citizens, errors in identification have resulted in citizens being wrongfully caught within such systems.
Recent cases illustrate such wrongful deportations. Kilmar Abrego García, a Maryland resident, was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in 2025 despite presenting valid identification and despite ongoing judicial scrutiny of his case, prompting a federal judge to accuse the U.S. administration of obstructing the truth about his removal.
In the same year, Jordin Melgar-Salmeron, a Salvadoran national, who had been living in Virginia for several years before being taken into immigration detention, was deported to El Salvador. This, despite a federal appeals court order directing U.S. authorities to keep him in the country while his claims of fear of torture were being adjudicated. The government later attributed the removal to administrative lapses.
Historical precedents of citizenship stripping
Nazi Germany provides one of the most prominent examples of citizenship stripping used for expulsion. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews and other targeted groups of German citizenship, reducing them to subjects without political rights. In 1938, thousands of Polish Jews living in Germany were denaturalised and expelled, including through the mass deportations to the Polish border during the polenaktion.
In India, while some deportations of non-nationals have been stayed by High Courts so far, no compensation has been paid to nationals who were wrongfully detained, deported, and later brought back to India. The case of S. Anand highlighted the complex legal status of individuals born to refugee parents in India, who may not hold formal Indian citizenship but have no direct ties to Sri Lanka. Additionally, many Indian nationals of Chinese ethnic origin were deported in the aftermath of the 1962 Indo–Chinese War.
International legal framework
Article 9(5) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides: “Anyone who has been the victim of unlawful arrest or detention shall have an enforceable right to compensation.”
India ratified the ICCPR in 1979. However, it entered several reservations to the covenant. With reference to Article 9, the Government of the Republic of India stated that the provisions of the article would be applied in consonance with clauses (3) to (7) of Article 22 of the Constitution of India. It further clarified that, under the Indian legal system, there is no enforceable right to compensation against the State for persons claiming to be victims of unlawful arrest or detention.
Constitutional position in India
There is no specific provision in the Constitution of India that provides compensation to crime victims. However, certain constitutional provisions may be relevant in cases involving compensation for wrongful prosecution or violation of fundamental rights.
Article 32 guarantees the right to move the Supreme Court by appropriate proceedings for the enforcement of the rights conferred by Part III of the Constitution. The right guaranteed under this article shall not be suspended except as otherwise provided by the Constitution.
Under Article 226, every High Court has the power, throughout the territories within its jurisdiction, to issue directions, orders, or writs to any person or authority, including the government, for the enforcement of fundamental rights and for any other purpose. These include writs in the nature of habeas corpus, mandamus, prohibition, quo warranto, and certiorari.
This is Part 4 of a five-part series. Part 5 will examine the jurisprudential foundations of compensation for wrongful detention and forced expulsion.
