GOP whip: 'America-hating terrorists' should lose citizenship under SCAM Act

"This has to be dealt with," Emmer, a Minnesota Republican, told Fox News Digital.

"If you're going to take advantage of the generosity of Americans, or you are going to associate with known terrorist organizations or commit aggravated felonies or terrorist attacks, even attempted, it doesn't matter; no more playing games," said Emmer. "You should be denaturalized and shipped back to wherever the heck you came from." 

He lamented that under current law, "the standards to denaturalize someone are just too high," but noted, "we have a solution to fix it."

The bill, which on the House side currently sits in the House Judiciary Committee, allows prosecutors to use crimes committed after naturalization as evidence that an individual falsely claimed good moral character during the citizenship process, effectively arguing their citizenship was invalid from the start.

The SCAM Act already has nearly 50 House co-sponsors, according to Emmer. Once it is scheduled for a vote, he believes it will not have an issue passing and may even receive some bipartisan support from Democrats recognizing the gravity of the issue.

"It's really simple," he said. "The message is, terrorists do not belong on U.S. Soil, naturalized or not." 

At the start of March, Senegalese-born naturalized citizen Ndiaga Diagne killed three people and injured over a dozen in a shooting in Austin. Diagne was shot and killed by police responding to the attack. 

Then, March 12, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Lebanon, allegedly attempted to ram his vehicle into a Michigan synagogue filled with children and teachers. 

The same day at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a naturalized citizen from Sierra Leone, opened fire on a class of Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) students, killing Lt. Col. Brandon Shah. He also was killed at the scene. 

"Clearly something is broken in our immigration system," said Emmer, adding that terrorists "keep getting into our country and they keep being allowed to stay here at the expense of Americans and American lives."

"We can't go on like this," he went on, emphasizing, "It is more imperative now than ever that we get this thing done."

Despite this, Emmer has faced some opposition in Minnesota for his hardline stance. 

"The moment citizenship becomes conditional on whether a politician finds us convenient, none of us is safe," said Bashir. "Today, it might be the Somali Americans. Tomorrow, it could be another ethnic group."

Though he declined to hazard a guess on a timeline of when the bill might be passed, he said that "as soon as possible would be my plea."

"We have an immigration system that is not requiring these people to actually declare their allegiance to the United States of America and their willingness to be Americans," he said.

"We want anybody and everybody from anywhere who comes here to chase their American dream and become an American … we want you," he concluded. "If you come here and you don't intend to become an American, you intend to change America or destroy America, you need to get the heck out."