Just one step away from becoming a US citizen and pledging allegiance to the country, immigrants were “plucked out” of line at a Boston oath ceremony, according to US reports. The reported incident is said to have taken place at Boston’s Faneuil Hall on December 4 (US time), according to WGBH.
Immigrants close to attaining US citizenship hit with unexpected hindrance
As per the development, non-US nationals who’d partaken in a rigorous process to attain American citizenship and had already been approved to be naturalised were ultimately pulled out of line owing their connection with their original countries. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officials confirmed the same to the outlet.
This unexpected twist in the lives of those waiting to take their Oath of Allegiance to the US comes shortly after the Donald Trump administration ordered authorities to halt all immigration applications and asylum requests for some countries.
As per the US president’s bombshell declaration, individuals from 19 “high-risk” countries that were already facing travel ban or other restrictions were ultimately hit with even more severe blocks after an Afghan national was identified as the suspect of the recent shooting near the White House. The tragedy resulted in two National Guard members in critical condition. One of them eventually succumbed to her injuries and passed away.
The countries in question are Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, The Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos , Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently said in a Fox New interview that this list may be expanded to include more than 30 countries down the line.
USCIS officers have since revealed that the federal agency directed them to pull people out from the line at the oath ceremony in light of the new proclamation by the POTUS, according to WGBH.
Immigrants speak out
The Boston incident isn’t the first of its kind in the US. Several other naturalisation ceremonies across the country have faced similar snags in the recent past under the Trump administration.
“People were plucked out of line. They didn’t cancel the whole ceremony,” nonprofit Project Citizenship’s executive director Gail Breslow told WGBH. She further asserted that quite a few of her client got cancellation notices beforehand. However, not everyone fell in the same pool. Those who didn’t receive prior intimation about their naturalisation ceremony being cancelled ended up reaching the venue to take their oath.
As per Breslow’s admission to the US outlet, one of her clients who is a Haitian woman with a green card for over two decades, “said that she had gone to her oath ceremony because she hadn’t received the cancellation notice in time.” When the woman “showed up as scheduled,” she found out that officers were asking everyone about their country of origin. Certain answers led them to ask the people in line to step out, as their oath ceremonies were cancelled.
Similarly, a physician associate student in Texas whose citizenship had been approved months ago was waiting for an email to reveal her ceremony date. However, she ended up getting an email about the event’s cancellation instead, as per the New York Times.
She told the NY news outlet that the decision was possibly fuelled by the fact that she was born in Libya, a country she hadn’t lived in since she was a child. The Texas student is actually a Canadian citizen. “It’s definitely disappointing — having come from a third world country — it’s just never-ending disappointment,” she told NYT. Although she had been looking forward to vote in the 2026 midterm elections, she now added, “I definitely feel unwelcome here.”
In late November, Trump fumed on Truth Social, “I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the US system to fully recover,” after the Washington DC shooting incident. Blaming the Biden administration for its initiatives that brought foreign refugees into the US, he added, ““immigration policy has eroded… gains and living conditions for many.”
Trump further asserted, he would “terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalise migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilisation.”
