Raouf Vafaei followed all the rules.
He obtained his green card, passed his civics test and his naturalization interview, and underwent multiple background checks.
After eight years in the United States, Mr. Vafaei, an Iranian-born mental health worker who emigrated from Austria, was just days away from becoming an American citizen when he learned in a four-sentence email that his naturalization ceremony scheduled for Friday had been canceled.
“I was so excited,” Mr. Vafaei, 41, said in an interview this week, referring to the honor of officially calling himself an American. His mother had even bought a new dress for the occasion. “This is one wish that many people have all over the world.”
That honor is now paused, indefinitely.
After an Afghan refugee was charged in last month’s shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, the Trump administration has made sweeping changes to limit legal immigration, including halting the entire process for people from 19 countries that the White House put under a travel ban earlier this year.
From Massachusetts to California, people seeking citizenship and their lawyers say, federal immigration officials are canceling naturalization interviews and oath ceremonies for immigrants from Iran, Sudan, Eritrea, Haiti, Somalia and other countries restricted by Mr. Trump in June. Those almost-new citizens have been left in uncertainty about their futures in the United States, with some making sure they carry their documents in case they are questioned by immigration authorities as they go about their daily lives.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that oversees the immigration system, has not released data on the number of people affected, but the new wave of actions is likely to affect thousands from some of the poorest and most unstable nations in the world. Mr. Trump and his administration officials have argued their ban against these targeted nations is necessary to secure the country from “foreign terrorists” and those who overstay U.S. visas.
“There is no time frame — nobody knows how long this is going to be,” said Teresa Coles-Davila, an immigration lawyer in San Antonio who has struggled to obtain answers from federal immigration officials as she has sought to advise an Iranian client whose ceremony this month was canceled. “Literally, no one knows what is happening.”
The policy changes narrowing the legal path to citizenship have been unfolding more slowly and less publicly than the dramatic scenes that have played out on the streets as masked agents have raided homes, workplaces and courthouses searching for people to deport. The changes are among the many attempts on multiple fronts to tighten who can call themselves an American in the United States.
The Supreme Court on Friday announced that it would take up a landmark dispute over the constitutionality of President Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship, guaranteed in the 14th Amendment that American citizenship should be extended to anyone born in the United States. Senator Bernie Moreno, a Republican in Ohio who emigrated with his family as a child from their native Colombia, this week introduced legislation that would end dual citizenship in the United States.
This year, the Trump administration reinstated a more difficult civics test and ramped up social media vetting for people seeking to become naturalized citizens. Immigration officers have also been directed to check for more “positive attributes,” like family caregiving and stable employment.
Officials with Citizenship and Immigration Services on Friday did not respond to requests for comment or questions on how many citizenship ceremonies had been canceled or why. Officials also did not respond to claims from lawyers that their clients had been left in limbo.
Administration officials in the past have said that the requirements for acquiring citizenship have become stricter because the process had been too lax. In fiscal year 2024, 818,500 people became new citizens in naturalization ceremonies held in the United States and around the world, according to the agency.
Lawyers said their clients had already been vetted multiple times as they passed through a series of legal hoops before even applying for citizenship, including establishing lawful permanent residency and obtaining work authorization. The process to apply for citizenship itself has long been a cumbersome process that can take months, and sometimes years. The final, required step is taking the oath of allegiance and receiving a certificate of naturalization at a ceremony.
Mr. Vafaei, who left Iran when he was in his early 20s, had lived in Austria for 14 years before he immigrated to the United States in 2017 to help out his mother after the death of his father. He married an American citizen and obtained his green card. He is now in the middle of a divorce, but as he started his naturalization process in April, he passed his interview and background check and was approved for citizenship, he and his lawyer said.
The notice that his ceremony had been called off came in a short email this week with no explanation about when it would be rescheduled or what steps he should take next.
“I am so upset, but I can’t do anything about it,” he said. “All I can do is wait.”
Rosanna, a physician associate student in Texas, had shared the good news with her hospital colleagues after her citizenship was approved months ago. She had been looking forward to the email she expected to list her ceremony date. Instead, when the email came this week during a shift in the emergency room, it simply said that her ceremony was canceled.
Rosanna, who asked to be identified by only her first name for fear of repercussions from immigration officials, said she texted her lawyer after receiving the email. The best guess, she said, was the decision was most likely based on the fact that Rosanna, a Canadian citizen, had been born in Libya, where she holds no citizenship and had not lived since she was a child.
“It’s definitely disappointing — having come from a third world country — it’s just never-ending disappointment,” she said. “I definitely feel unwelcome here.” She said she had been looking forward to vote in next year’s midterm elections.
Other citizen petitioners have been turned away after arriving at their court ceremonies or interviews with little information as to why or how to proceed, their lawyers said.
Lawyers and staff members at the Boston office of Project Citizenship, a nonprofit providing free legal services to immigrants across Massachusetts and New England, typically see clients return to their office to show off their naturalization certificates and take cheerful photos with the people who helped them through the arduous citizenship process. But this month they have had 21 clients notified that their oath ceremonies had been canceled.
One of those clients, a Haitian woman who lives in Boston and has had her green card for more than 20 years, arrived for her ceremony, where she found Citizenship and Immigration Service officers asking people where they were from and telling those from countries affected by the travel ban, like herself, that they could not participate in the ceremony, said Gail Breslow, the group’s executive director.
“We have been hearing a lot of anxiety, fear,” she said. “We’ve been needing to reassure people that this isn’t their fault.”
For some lawyers, it was only the latest round of cancellations and confusion.
In late September and early October, dozens of immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras who had obtained asylum had their naturalization interviews canceled “on the spot” in the New York area, said Benjamin Remy, a senior coordinating attorney with the New York Legal Assistance Group, a social services organization. He and lawyers with other local nonprofits eventually pieced together that it had been over a little-noticed overnight policy change that had put their cases under review after several Latin American criminal organizations were designated terror groups.
Still, there are people who get through the process, which often culminates in a joyous oath ceremony capped with a sheet cake, light refreshments and dozens of participants waving miniature American flags.
In a Manhattan courtroom on Friday, the feelings of stress over the national immigration climate mingled with those of relief and excitement as 149 immigrants lined up before federal officials to complete the final step in their citizenship process. Friends and relatives pumped their fists in the air to cheer on one petitioner. The family member of another waited with a bouquet of red, white and blue roses.
A couple of hours later, no one had been turned away, and a judge took the bench to lead the participants in the oath of allegiance, sharing bits of her grandparents’ own immigrant background and quoting soaring rhetoric about the contributions of immigrants from Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.
Maureen Lissade, 51, originally from Germany, attended her ceremony alone because her husband was at work and her children at school. Nevertheless, she was excited and relieved. She had married a U.S. citizen 10 years ago and had soon obtained her green card. They had two American-born children, and she spoke English. Still, she felt unease over the hard-line turn of immigration enforcement.
“You hear stories,” she said of why she had applied for her citizenship this year. “I wanted to be more secure, to not have that hanging over my head.”
Jazmine Ulloa is a national reporter covering immigration for The Times.
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