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A naturalization ceremony in Indianapolis Tuesday turned away dozens of would-be American citizens moments before they were scheduled to take the oath of allegiance to the United States.
The action followed a Dec. 2 policy memorandum from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services barring some pending naturalization cases for applicants from countries suspended earlier this year by President Donald Trump.
At the Indiana Bar Foundation’s “We the People” ceremony at Union Station, 38 of the 100 scheduled candidates were turned away, according to the Marion County Clerk’s Office, which attends naturalization events to assist with voter registration. Local officials said they do not yet know which countries the 38 applicants came from.
A USCIS official at the Indianapolis field office declined to answer questions and referred inquiries to the agency’s media office. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said USCIS “has paused all adjudications for aliens from high-risk countries while USCIS works to ensure that all aliens from these countries are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.”
The Indianapolis Star reported that USCIS said it had notified affected applicants two weeks earlier that their ceremony had been canceled, raising questions about why they appeared Tuesday.
Marion County Clerk Kate Sweeney Bell said her office has no information about the applicants’ next steps. She noted that Indiana has significant Burmese and Haitian immigrant communities. Their homelands are among the 19 nations considered high-risk under the new USCIS policy. The others are Afghanistan, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
The new policy comes on the heels of a Washington, D.C., shooting last month that left one National Guard soldier seriously injured and one dead. The charged shooter is Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan man who previously served in one of Afghanistan’s elite counterterrorism units, which was operated by the CIA. Lakanwal reportedly came to the U.S. through Operation Allies Welcome, a program crafted under President Joe Biden’s administration that assisted Afghans, including those who worked with the U.S. in Afghanistan over the past two decades, resettle in the U.S. on parole without permanent immigration status.
USCIS’s memorandum also calls for a comprehensive re-review — and potential re-interview — of individuals from high-risk countries who arrived on or after Jan. 20, 2021.
The next Indianapolis naturalization ceremony is set for Dec. 18 at the Indiana War Memorial, where another 100 applicants are scheduled to take the oath. Bell said she plans to attend if permitted.
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