Several immigrants ready to take their citizenship oaths at Boston’s Faneuil Hall in the last week were told they could not proceed because of their countries of origin.
The same situation is playing out across the country.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has instructed its employees to halt immigration pathways to people from 19 countries deemed high risk, including Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti and Somalia.
The naturalization ceremony is the final step to becoming a U.S. citizen, a process that takes years to complete.
The Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA) said Monday that five people they have been working with received cancellation notices, and another 40 people are now uncertain of their future.
“At least 45 people MIRA has been supporting for months as they navigate the complicated and extensive American immigration and naturalization system have been impacted by these latest abrupt changes by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Five of those individuals found out last week that, after extensive vetting, interviews and tests, their oath of citizenship at historic Faneuil Hall had been cancelled while at least 40 who had begun the process now face further uncertainty and delay. This decision and the process is as crass as it is cruel and arbitrary. People are disheartened, devastated and rightly outraged,” MIRA Executive Director Elizabeth Sweet said in a statement.
Most of those getting cancellation notices are from the 19 countries included in the current ban.
Several people said they received cancellation notices through an online portal, but said the notices provided no further guidance. Project Citizenship, which said some of its clients were impacted, provided an example of a cancellation letter.
Advocates say these cancellations have been going out on a rolling basis, but not everyone is getting the memo and some are finding out as they show up at the door of their ceremony. Gail Breslow, the executive director at Project Citizenship, said a client of hers who has lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years was told on Thursday when she showed up for her ceremony that she wouldn’t become a citizen.
“It happened to one of our clients who has lived here for more than 20 years,” Breslow said of her client, a 55-year-old Haitian woman she’s not identifying.
“To be literally turned away at the door is despicable,” she said. “She’s devastated, and she’s also anxious, as is any of our clients who have been affected in this way.”
For Moisés, a Connecticut resident originally from Cuba, the news came as a painful setback. He left Cuba 17 years ago. Nearing retirement, he is preparing for heart surgery.
“I just want the government to consider all the people who have come to do good for this country, which helps make this country better, and not to continue with this approach,” he said in Spanish.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu expressed outrage at the situation over the weekend.
“It’s despicable and it is deeply painful to see this happening across the country but to feel it at the ‘cradle of liberty’ in Boston at Faneuil Hall a place that represents the foundation of this country and the very values that have made our nation who we are,” Wu said.
She reiterated that sentiment Monday.
“This is one more example of the cruelty of this federal administration,” she said.
Wu, who said she helped her parents become citizens, also emphasized how much work goes into the process.
“It is hard. And it takes a lot of effort and preparation, and so I know how much these families must have put in and how excited they must have been at that moment,” she said.
The process to become a U.S. citizen typically takes between three to five years and requires an application, an interview and a test, plus hundreds of dollars in fees.
“It’s a way for people not only to be able to walk the streets freely, but to be able to travel freely. It also confers the right to vote the right to petition for the family members to come,” Breslow explained.
USCIS has said this immigration pause is part of an effort to strengthen its screening processes and keep criminals from entering the U.S.
“We changed that approach on day one of the Trump administration. Under President Trump, we are building more protective measures that ensure fraud, deception, and threats do not breach the integrity of our immigration system,” USCIS Director Joseph B. Edlow wrote Friday in a press release announcing a new screening center headquartered in Atlanta.
NBC10 Boston has reached out for comment on the specific situation at Faneuil Hall but has not yet heard back.
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