Dozens of people arrived at Indianapolis Union Station thinking they'd become U.S. citizens only to learn their participation was \

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/40346519

Ryan Murphy
from Indianapolis Star
Dec. 10, 2025, 6:20 a.m. ET

As people made their way into the Indianapolis Union Station for a naturalization ceremony, federal officials stopped certain applicants and told them that they wouldn’t be leaving the building with U.S. citizenship.

The immigrants — who had already passed every step in the long naturalization process — needed only to take the oath of allegiance Dec. 9, 2025, to become citizens. A federal directive handed down by U.S. Immigration and Customs Services on Dec. 2, however, made that impossible for more than one third of people signed up for the Indianapolis ceremony.

Zhibo Zhao, a US Citizenship and Immigration Services official present at the event, said oaths of allegiance for 38 of the 100 participants were “canceled.”