Naturalized Americans thought they were safe, but Trump’s immigration policies raise doubts

NEW YORK (AP) — When Dauda Sesay came to the United States after fleeing the civil war in Sierra Leone and spending nearly a decade in a refugee camp, he had no idea he could become naturalized. But they told him that if he followed the rules and didn’t get into trouble, after a few years he could apply for it. As a US citizen, you would be protected.

That’s what made him decide to undertake the process: the premise—and the promise—that becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen would create a bond between him and his new home. He would have rights and responsibilities, such as voting, and by committing to the country, the country would also commit to him.

“When I raised my hand and took the oath of allegiance, I believed in that moment in the promise of belonging,” said Sesay, 48, who came to Louisiana more than 15 years ago and works as an advocate for refugees and their integration into American society.

But in recent months, as President Donald Trump restructures immigration and the nation’s relationship with migrants, that belief has shattered for Sesay and other naturalized citizens. There are now fears that efforts to sharply increase deportations and change who can call the United States home, through measures such as trying to end birthright citizenship, are having a domino effect.

What they considered to be the fundamental protection of naturalization now feels more like quicksand.

What happens if they leave?

Some are concerned that if they leave the country, they will have difficulty returning, fearful of accounts of naturalized citizens who have been questioned or detained by U.S. border agents. They wonder if they should lock their cell phones to protect their privacy. Others are reluctant to move nationally as well, after stories like that of a citizen accused of being in the country illegally and arrested even after his mother presented her birth certificate.

There has been no evidence of an increase in denationalizations so far in this Trump term. But that has not reassured some. Sesay says he no longer travels within the country without his passport, despite having a REAL ID with the strict identity requirements mandated by the federal government.

Immigration raids, often carried out by masked and unmarked federal agents in places like Chicago and New York City, have sometimes detained American citizens. One of them, who says he has been detained by immigration agents twice, has filed a federal lawsuit.

To fuel concern, the Justice Department issued a memo this summer announcing that it would redouble efforts to denaturalize migrants who have committed crimes or are considered a risk to national security. At one point, Trump went so far as to threaten the citizenship of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old Democratic socialist who was naturalized as a young man.

This atmosphere makes some afraid to talk about the situation in public, for fear of drawing negative attention to themselves. Requests for comment through various community organizations and other contacts found no one willing to speak publicly besides Sesay.

In New Mexico, state Sen. Cindy Nava says she is familiar with the fear, having grown up without proper documentation before entering DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program under former President Barack Obama that protected those brought to the country as children from deportation — and gaining citizenship through marriage. But I didn’t expect to see so much fear among naturalized citizens.

“I have never seen those people be afraid (…) The people I know who were not afraid before are now not sure what their status holds for them in terms of a safety net,” Nava said.

Stephen Kantrowitz, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noted that the meaning of citizenship, and who was included, has expanded and contracted throughout American history. Although the word “citizen” is in the original Constitution, it is not defined, he explained.

“When the Constitution was written, no one knew what citizenship meant,” he said. “It’s a technical term, it comes from the French revolutionary tradition. It suggests a kind of equality of the members of a political community, and it has some implications for the right to be a member of that political community. But it is… very indefinite.”

American immigration and its obstacles

The first naturalization law passed in 1790 by the new country’s Congress established that citizenship was for any “free white person” of good character. People of African descent or born in Africa were added as a specific category to federal immigration law after the ravages of the Civil War in the 19th century, which was also when the 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution to establish birthright citizenship.

In the last years of the 19th century and the first of the 20th, laws were enacted that limited immigration and, by extension, naturalization. The Immigration Law of 1924 vetoed the entry of people from Asia because they could not qualify for naturalization, as they were neither white nor black. That did not change until 1952, when an immigration law ended racial restrictions on naturalization. The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 replaced the previous immigration system with one that distributed visas equitably.

American history also includes times when citizenship was withdrawn from those who held it, such as after the 1923 Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind. The resolution indicated that Indians could not be naturalized because they did not qualify as whites, which led to several dozen denaturalizations. At other times it was ignored, such as in World War II, when Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps.

“Political power sometimes simply decides that a group of people, or a person or a family, does not have the right to citizenship,” Kantrowitz said.

Right now, Sesay says it feels like a betrayal.

“To the United States of America, that is what I took that oath of allegiance to and that is what I committed myself to,” he said. “Now, within my country, I’m seeing a change…Honestly, that’s not the America I believed in when I put my hand over my heart.”

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