On a hot morning this month, a small group sat on fold-up chairs set up on the grass at Tumacacori National Historic Park, just south of Tucson. A striking, mission-style church with pale stone pillars and red brick loomed in front of the group, while teenagers with a local high school’s brass band adjusted their instruments to the rear.
Tumacacori is a historic O’odham homestead that also hosted Yaqui and Apache communities, along with Spanish mission settlements. There, on that day,14 people from four different countries would take their oath of allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, the final step in the citizenship process.
Park Superintendent Michael F. Medrano told them the site represents an intersection of different cultures and people whose cooperation with each other wasn’t always easy.
“These struggles and challenges may mirror similar struggles and challenges you have endured to be here today to earn the title of citizen of the United States of America,” he said.
Citizenship oath ceremonies like this usually take place in a courtroom. But a special ceremony happens here at Tumacacori every year in honor of Constitution Day and Citizenship Day — commemorating the signing of the historic document on Sept. 17, 1787, and all those who become U.S. citizens.
For Nancy Navarro, the ceremony marked the end of a yearlong process, and nearly three decades in the U.S. She’s originally from Guanajuato, Mexico, and was undocumented before becoming a permanent U.S. resident. Her husband and two daughters were all born here.
She gets teary-eyed talking about what it means to finally be at this moment.
“It represents a lot for me and my family — the freedom to walk here, to have a voice, to leave fear behind,” she says. "Even though my husband is a native-born citizen, it took me 29 years to get to this day, due to a twist of fate, nothing wrong, just what I was dealt.”
For Navarro’s oldest daughter, Elizabeth, watching her mom become a citizen is a relief. She says under the second Trump administration, permanent residency no longer seems like a guarantee of safety.
“In a lot of ways, I think the last year felt like a renewal of the fear I felt when my mom was undocumented,” she says. “I don’t always feel the safest because of what I look like. I don’t always feel the safety for my family either, because of what they look like.”
That’s a feeling a lot of people are having now, as the administration’s immigration crackdown continues. But the process of becoming a citizen has also changed — and applicants face a harder and longer road to get there.
Data shows Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is processing fewer naturalization applications and rejecting people more frequently than it did under the Biden administration, even as fewer applications come in.
More than 742,000 applications were pending by the end of June of this year, compared to roughly 463,000 in June of 2024. Applicants were denied roughly twice as often between April and June of this year than they were during the same period in 2024.
That’s partly because of the ramped up applicant screening processes the administration has enacted. Applicants now face increased English-language proficiency requirements and an expanded civics test.
The agency is also proposing to significantly raise the fee to apply for naturalization and narrowing the scope of who is eligible for fee waivers. USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler says the agency’s changes are meant to ensure citizenship is reserved for “those who qualify.”
“For years, the Biden administration prioritized rubberstamping naturalization applications with minimal vetting,” Kahler said in an email. “USCIS will not take shortcuts in the naturalization process. Naturalization is a privilege, not a right.”
Michael Knowles is a retired asylum officer and the president of American Federation of Government Employees’ Local 1924, which represents 2,500 USCIS employees in the Washington, D.C., region. He also serves as the executive vice president of a larger coalition of local USCIS unions.
He says the agency has always done rigorous vetting.
“Any sort of blanket assertion that our officers have rubber-stamped applications and looked the other way and not properly vetted people is just not true,” he said. “And so it’s somewhat demoralizing to our members for that to be part of the public narrative when, in fact, immigration officers are very thoroughly trained.”
But, Knowles says, the agency’s long struggle with staff and funding shortages was worsened by mass layoffs enacted under DOGE at the beginning of last year. Now, he says, officers are being pulled in even more directions, as the administration prioritizes new screening measures and requires re-vetting for existing applications.
Elizabeth Taufa, an attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, says applicants today face higher scrutiny for past actions that used to have no bearing on a citizenship application — like having been on a tax payment plan.
“We're just seeing so many more background checks, so much more data sharing between agencies,” she said. “I think that that's the difference — previous administrations said, ‘Naturalization is important, so we should make it accessible.’ And this administration is saying, ‘Naturalization is important. We need to make it as hard as possible for people to get it.’”
Taufa says more recent USCIS announcements — like the return of neighborhood and work visits — has also made people more hesitant to apply, even if they’re eligible.
At the same time, the administration has ramped up denaturalization efforts, where the government petitions a court to strip someone of their citizenship. Fifty such cases were filed in July — the highest monthly total on record.
“We're really seeing this administration be really hostile, openly, to the eligible-to-naturalize population and also naturalized citizens, to the point where people say, ‘I don't know if it's worth it to naturalize,’” she said.
Karime Rodriguez helps community members fill out citizenship applications as an organizer with the political action group LUCHA; she is also in the process of applying herself. Rodriguez says she understands the fear.
“It has crossed my mind once or twice before, as well,” she said. “But, I just want to be able to participate civically and it's something that I also try to encourage our members about.”
Back at the oath ceremony at Tumacacori, that’s a mindset Nancy Navarro knows well. “Being able to vote has been a dream of mine since I arrived in this country." she said. "I never thought I would actually become a citizen."
When we talked, she had just come from registering to vote with Pima County.
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