The Trump administration is reviving the practice of having immigration officials conduct neighborhood checks to vet immigrants applying for citizenship.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — the federal agency that reviews applications and grants citizenship — announced in a memo last week that it will resume interviewing citizenship applicants’ neighbors, employers and coworkers from the five-year period leading up to their application. This type of investigation was already policy, though they were not often conducted. In 1991, the predecessor to USCIS granted district directors the authority waive neighborhood investigations, which essentially ended the practice.
“I suspect this is really just about slowing down the process, adding more obstacles in the way of people who are trying to become citizens because they have no good justification for going to this,” said Sarang Sekhavat, chief of staff at the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. They host free naturalization clinics at their offices.
Damaris Velasquez, cofounder of Agencia ALPHA, a Boston-based advocacy group that helps immigrants as they try to become citizens, said that since President Donald Trump’s second term started, many permanent residents are going to Agencia ALPHA offices seeking help becoming citizens “out of fear” they might be deported.
“I won’t be surprised if some people are just gonna prefer not to apply and wait until hopefully the next term when we have a different administration,” Velasquez said.
What changes are coming
From 1802 to 1981, petitioners for naturalization were required to present two witnesses who could testify to their qualifications for citizenship. In 1981, Congress eliminated the requirement for witnesses, transitioning instead to the neighborhood investigation. By 1991, the advent of fingerprinting technology streamlined background checks, so the government stopped requiring neighborhood checks. They still conduct in-person checks for investigations of suspected marriage fraud.
USCIS currently assesses applicants through biometrics, like fingerprinting, collecting signatures and running criminal background checks with the FBI.
But that’s soon about to shift, reflecting the president’s more stringent scrutiny of immigrants. USCIS said the investigations will be an important part of deeming whether someone is qualified to acquire U.S. citizenship. It is unclear how much the additional screening will cost the federal government.
“USCIS is working to ensure that only the most qualified applicants receive American citizenship,” said agency director Joseph Edlow in a written statement. He said the Immigration and Nationality Act directs USCIS to “conduct personal investigations and incorporating neighborhood investigations will help enhance these statutorily required investigations to ensure that we are meeting congressional intent.”
The USCIS memo said citizenship applicants the agency should “proactively” share testimonial letters from their neighbors, employers and coworkers. Failure to include those letters with an application could automatically trigger a neighborhood check.
Individual agents will still have the power to grant a waiver after reviewing an applicant’s materials. If they don’t, officers will go out into communities for in-person interviews.
It is unclear when the new standards will go into effect. USCIS told GBH News it will issue a separate “policy manual guidance” with the effective date.
How citizenship works
Becoming a U.S. citizen isn’t an easy task, and it always involves becoming a permanent resident first.
Only certain immigrants have access to getting permanent residency, including people who marry U.S. citizens; those with a U.S.- born child that is 21 or older who can petition on their behalf; certain student visa holders, immigrants on victims of crime visas, and those with employment visas whose employers are willing to help with acquiring one.
Many immigrants don’t qualify because they’re here on temporary statuses that don’t have a path to permanent residency.
Once they have a green card and have waited the appropriate amount of time (three years for those married to U.S. citizens, and five for everyone else) applicants go through a process called naturalization, where they must pass a civics exam, an English test, and not have a significant criminal record.
About 23,600 Massachusetts became citizens in fiscal year 2024, according to federal data.
Helena DaSilva Hughes, president of the Immigrants’ Assistance Center in New Bedford, which helps with citizenship applications, said her organization has seen a large increase of people inquiring about citizenship. Now, she’s concerned the neighborhood checks will discourage some people from applying.
“It’s already a very intimidating process,” she said. Both Immigrants’ Assistance Center in New Bedford and Agencia ALPHA assist hundreds of applicants in the naturalization process annually.
Velasquez of Agencia ALPHA was undocumented herself for 23 years, before becoming a permanent resident, and then a citizen in 2018.
The organization provides 10-week citizenship classes, at two hours a week. They help filling out paperwork, practice citizenship interviews, help with biometric appointments, and try to make the process easier all the way to the oath ceremony. The application process takes four to eight months, but for people with common names, it can take over a year.
“We’re gonna start telling our clients or applicants that there is gonna be a big possibility that if we submit [the application] and if we don’t submit these letters, they might be asked later on to submit something,” said Velasquez.
The change is the second in August that aims to place extra restrictions on the naturalization process. On Aug. 15, the Trump administration ordered USCIS officers to go beyond reviewing “absence of wrongdoing” in an applicant, and take a “holistic” approach of determining whether immigrants are worthy of U.S. citizenship. That includes weighing new factors in determining whether applicants meet a “good moral character” requirement, like whether the immigrant adheres to “societal norms.”
