The Trump administration has slowed the application process for would-be citizens, deciding 73% fewer naturalization cases over the past year — extending wait times for immigrants hoping to cast a ballot, reunite with family members, or be protected from deportation.
US Citizenship and Immigration Services’ latest quarterly data show it decided around 71,000 cases between April and June of this year, compared to around 265,000 during the same period last year.
“The naturalization cliff that we see in the data, it’s unprecedented,” said Lucia Martel Dow, director of the New Americans Campaign at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
The Department of Homeland Security, which has shifted USCIS priorities to increase scrutiny of applications, trumpeted the drop in naturalizations on social media.
“Americans are amassing victories NEVER seen before thanks to President Trump,” the post said.
Approvals in the latest quarter are down 75% compared to last year. And a review of data back to late 2017 shows the agency at its lowest level of naturalization decisions, though applications have also recently dropped off.
Among the cases decided, the share of those denied has risen. In Los Angeles, the denial rate doubled to more than 18%. In Baltimore, it jumped to 35% from less than 7% in the same quarter of the previous fiscal year.
“Under the Trump administration, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is reinforcing robust screening and vetting and has implemented reforms to ensure U.S. citizenship is reserved for those who qualify,” USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler said in a statement.
The slowdown in approvals comes as USCIS publicly turned its focus from serving US employers and foreign nationals to policing fraud in the immigration system.
The agency late last year introduced a new, more stringent civics test for naturalization and expanded “good moral character” standards officers evaluate for citizenship applications.
Officers have also been pressed to justify use of discretion in favor of candidates, where previously it was more difficult to deny approvals, said Douglas Pierce, who supervised officers at the USCIS field office in Detroit until retiring last year.
The agency has also expanded interview mandates and made the process lengthier, while shedding workers. Roughly a fifth of employment-based green card applicants were required to sit for interviews previously, whereas almost all must do so now, said Jonathan Micale, a former USCIS service center director now at Integra Strategic Advisors LLC.
Immigrants in many stages of the application process are feeling the wait times. Jose, 70, who emigrated from Peru in 2017, hasn’t been scheduled for an interview nearly a year since USCIS received his application.
“I was so excited, going to English classes, and working and practicing English with the family and then month after month passed by,” Jose said, using only his first name out of fear of reprisals in his case. “I want to be a citizen because being a part of this country is a privilege. I carry my green card everywhere but the ultimate thing is citizenship.”
President Donald Trump’s return to the White House last year spurred a short-term spike in naturalization applications as immigrants sought status that couldn’t easily be rolled back. But applications have since fallen — the result of an immigration crackdown that’s had a chilling effect on many would-be applicants, advocates said.
“People are fearful because of the enforcement environment across the board,” said Martel Dow of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
In the Seattle USCIS field office, naturalization applications fell by 35% in the third quarter of fiscal 2026 compared to the same period last year. Filings fell by 40% in Chicago and 48% in the Phoenix field office.
USCIS in August adopted a policy re-introducing neighborhood investigations of people seeking citizenship. That could add to fears deterring immigrants from applying, Pierce said.
“Do you really want to bring yourself to the attention of Homeland Security at this point?” he said.
For those who are applying, the delays are growing. At the start of the year, the average wait time for a naturalization application was just over seven months. As of August, it’s over a year.
“We made it our target to get the wait times not only down to below six months nationally, but also very consistent across the board,” said Michael Valverde, who was at USCIS for more than two decades before leaving last year.
The wait times are not equally long across field offices. In several offices, including Baltimore, Boise, Fort Myers, and Fresno, the wait time is 15 months or more. The shortest wait times are around 9 months.
Matthew Glinsmann, an immigration attorney in Baltimore, identified a new delay adding several months between the approval of the interview and the oath ceremony where immigrants pledge allegiance to the US.
Normally, he said, an oath ceremony would be scheduled one to two months after a client was approved. Now he has clients who were approved in January, but weren’t given the oath until September.
“You are not a US citizen until you take the oath,” said Alexandra Olins, director of employment and citizenship services at Asian Counseling and Referral Service in Seattle.
The long waits, she said, could have dire consequences if minor children close to turning 18 are depending on their parents to receive citizenship. USCIS doesn’t publicly track time elapsed between the approval and the oath ceremony.
Jose, 69, an immigrant from El Salvador who’s held a green card for decades, was approved to naturalize in March, but still hasn’t been scheduled for an oath ceremony. He came to the US when he was 21 but only recently applied for citizenship because he feared being targeted by immigration enforcement authorities.
“More than anything it’s security,” said Jose, using his first name only to avoid retribution. “Despite living here all these years, I don’t feel at ease now.”
