Judge Stefan Underhill looked out at the people gathered in the pews of his Bridgeport courtroom. Dressed in suits, their hair curled and combed, some hushed toddlers while others whispered translations into the ears of elderly loved ones. These gatherings, Underhill thought, always look like a meeting of the United Nations — natives of Jamaica, China, Guatemala, Ireland, Colombia, Canada, South Korea, Mexico, Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Chile, Spain, and Ecuador were summoned here, in common purpose. Outside, the morning air was frigid — Jan. 16. Eight days earlier, Renee Good, a mother of three, had been killed in broad daylight in Minneapolis by immigration enforcement agents. Two days earlier, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, a bystander to an arrest by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, was shot in the leg.   It was a tough time to be an immigrant, Underhill knew, and that is what he told them.   “I’ll be very frank: you can’t turn on the television without seeing scenes that, in my view, are un-American,” he said. “I just want to say, if you’ve been treated poorly because of your immigration status by someone else in our community, I want to apologize, because our country is better than that.” Diana Paez, who’d been looking at the judge as he spoke, turned her head away and wiped her eyes. A psychiatrist who immigrated to the U.S. from Medellin, Colombia, she was thinking of patients and friends, noncitizens who had no such ceremony on the calendar. The judge’s speech was moving, Paez said, but what affected her more was the emotion evident in his eyes. “It shows that there are still people, Americans, that understand this situation,” she said.  Then, it was time. Paez stood up and raised her right hand. She repeated the phrases after Underhill:   “I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty…” Yes, she would defend the Constitution. She would bear arms on behalf of the United States. She would be faithful and true.  “…I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, so help me God.” With those promises, Paez became one of around 10,000 people who are naturalized each year in Connecticut; In the U.S. broadly, around 800,000 take the oath annually. Intense, sometimes conflicting feelings permeate these ceremonies: the joy of completing a long journey to arrive at a new home, the relief of safety after fleeing conflict, the sorrow of leaving a homeland behind. People take a pledge read out by Judge Vernon D. Oliver during their naturalization ceremony at the federal courthouse in Hartford on February 6, 2026. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror For centuries, people have been raising their hands in Connecticut to become U.S. citizens. Now, as the country bears witness to violent scenes between heavily armed immigration enforcement officers and civilians, and as the Trump administration has canceled some naturalizations at the final hour, those emotions are heightened still.  For many, the ceremony now brings another sentiment to the surface: guilt and worry for the people outside of the courtroom, foreign-born residents, like them, who might have aspired to citizenship but have been shut out of this pivotal moment.  In December, the Trump administration suspended naturalization ceremonies for people originating from 19 countries that were already under a travel ban after the fatal shooting of two National Guard members in Washington D.C. by an Afghan national. Since then, the administration has added 20 more countries to the list.  Others have learned that their ceremonies were abruptly canceled or waited in vain for interviews with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS told The Connecticut Mirror that it has paused the process for people from “high-risk” countries to allow for a maximum level of screening. “The pause will allow for a comprehensive examination of all pending benefit requests for aliens from the designated high-risk countries,” officials said in an emailed statement. “The safety of the American people always comes first.” That pause has left the lives of some who were in the process of seeking citizenship in limbo. It has also prompted concern from organizations that work with these immigrants, helping them with English language coaching, gathering documents and practicing for the citizenship interview and test.  That test has also become more difficult in recent months. It now draws on a larger pool of possible questions, and respondents must answer more questions and a greater share of them correctly. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has ramped up allegations of fraud against people who have already completed the naturalization process, seeking to take away citizenship from some foreign-born Americans. Sen. Richard Blumenthal shakes a newly naturalized woman’s hand as Judge Vernon D. Oliver hands her a certificate at the federal courthouse in Hartford on February 6, 2026. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror Delays and cancellations In Hartford, a program called The American Place, which operates out of the public library, helps people learn English, renew green cards and complete citizenship applications. Giuliana Musilli, an attorney with The American Place, said paperwork was submitted last summer for nine people who should have been eligible to receive a citizenship interview, but they had thus far heard nothing back from the government about scheduling. They were starting to grow concerned. Musilli said clients from countries that were not under the travel ban, who submitted their paperwork around the same time, already had interviews scheduled. But for clients from countries like Haiti, Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran and Myanmar, the process seems stuck, Musilli said. Still other clients have successfully scheduled interviews, only to find out they were cancelled. Even once the interview and testing process is complete, making it through the oath ceremony is not a guarantee. One of the organization’s clients, a young woman from Tanzania, successfully passed her citizenship interview and test after months of work, staff with The American Place told CT Mirror. In December, she waited in a room of the federal courthouse in Hartford, her hair professionally styled for the anticipated photo of the hard-won moment. But her name was never called. Michele Brophy acted as a mentor to the woman — who did not respond to a request from CT Mirror for an interview. Brophy said she was a refugee with a green card who’d spent her high school years in the U.S. and was currently in college studying to work in health care.  “None of this is her fault. She did everything she was supposed to do,” Brophy said. “Everything was completely legal.”  So far, a new oath ceremony has not been scheduled.  While a cancelled ceremony doesn’t impede a person’s ability to live in the U.S. legally, it has serious implications. Noncitizens can’t vote in federal or state elections, or obtain a U.S. passport. They can’t petition for family members to join them in the United States. Citizenship also guarantees certain rights and freedoms, like the right to protest without fear of reprisal. Maria Muñoz, the executive director of Building One Community in Stamford, said her organization guides immigrants through the process of becoming citizens. She and her colleagues have noticed an uptick recently in the share of older people beginning the naturalization process, many of them green card holders who were too busy working and bringing up their families to go through the time-consuming process of becoming citizens.  “Citizenship brings peace of mind. It removes the need to renew a green card and ensures their status is fully secure. At the end of the day, citizenship gives people the greatest stability and protection in the country they now call home,” Muñoz said via email.  Her organization has also seen a heightened level of concern among the many Haitian families it serves, who have seen their Temporary Protective Status revoked by the Trump administration.  “These are individuals who have been living and working in the United States for years, raising children, supporting relatives, and contributing to their communities. Many are now urgently seeking legal guidance to determine whether they qualify for another form of relief or what steps to take to protect their families,” she said.  A frequent guest In February, Federal Judge Vernon Oliver presided over three naturalization ceremonies in one morning in his Hartford courtroom.  Sen. Richard Blumenthal gives a speech to a courtroom full of individuals about to be naturalized at the federal courthouse in Hartford on February 6, 2026. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror It had been 13 days since protester and ICU nurse Alex Pretti was killed by immigration enforcement officers in Minneapolis. In all three ceremonies, Oliver introduced a guest: Sen. Richard Blumenthal. The senator makes a point to try and attend the ceremonies whenever he can, he explained in a brief but well-honed speech. Attendance is not part of his job description. But the ceremonies — with their affirmation of American values of inclusion and freedom — have become a balm, he told them. “I work a lot in Washington, D.C., and things are often kind of dark and discouraging there. When I come here it restores my faith in America, and when I look at you, I also see my dad,” who came to the U.S. at age 17 from Nazi Germany, Blumenthal said. Blumenthal thanked the people there for becoming U.S. citizens, affirming their value to the American experiment. He told them about his father, and then he spoke about their rights. Over the past year, Blumenthal has placed more emphasis on this final message: There are no second-class citizens in this country. Everyone is equal in the eyes of the law.  “The minute you’re a citizen, you have exactly the same rights and protections as someone who has been here for five generations or whose family goes back 250 years,” he told them. They now had the right to vote, to privacy and also to dissent — “the right to criticize people like me who get elected and to vote against them,” Blumenthal said. A young girl holds an American flag before a naturalization ceremony in Hartford on February 6, 2026. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror ‘Some things we need to fix’ Caroline Ledger sat in one of the pews of Judge Underhill’s court, watching him pose for photos with her fellow Americans, but her eyes welled with tears as her mind wandered outside of the courtroom.  “There are a lot of people in the world who would like to be sitting here,” she said.  Ledger came to the U.S. on a fiancée visa 15 years ago from Canada, and she said her friends there have expressed dismay about her adopted country’s politics. Ledger says that outlook tends to paint the U.S. with a broad brush. “Don’t fall into the myth of pure evil, where all of a sudden, in America, everything is bad. Some things we need to fix, but just because things need fixing doesn’t mean the whole thing’s broken,” she said. Maria Martiarena came from Peru to the U.S. two decades ago. At age 81, she and her husband were finally being naturalized, their family members anxious to ensure they would be able to spend the rest of their lives in this country.  “Of course we’re worried about what’s happening,” said her granddaughter, Paola Reyes. The family knows people who have come to the U.S. also seeking a better life but lacking citizenship status. “Even if they are acting as good residents, they could be deported,” Reyes said.  Her husband, Jose Reyes, arrived from Honduras in the 1990s and became a citizen in 2008. He said people today don’t seem to understand what immigrants bring to this country and why they leave home.  “They need to change the laws around immigration. I think we’re a big help to this country, because we bring workers who like to work, who come to work,” he said. “In protests, there are people who might hurt someone else, like the police, but in general how they treat us, immigrants, is wrong. We’re human beings.” A booth set up outside the naturalization ceremony at the federal courthouse in Hartford on February 6, 2026 offers newly naturalized citizens a chance to register to vote. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror For some newly minted citizens, like Sweyta Lohani, the right to vote is the most thrilling of all. Lohani came to the U.S. from Nepal as a student 19 years ago. Now a scientist working with artificial intelligence, she is looking forward to a first in her life.  “I’ve never actually voted, ever, in my life,” she said.  Alma Rosa Rivera came to the U.S. from Mexico for work 23 years ago and soon found a career and a husband, and had a child. Today she works as a home health aide. When it came time to renew her green card, she decided to begin the process of becoming a citizen instead. She became a citizen in a naturalization ceremony earlier this month in Bridgeport. “For me, the biggest benefit of becoming a citizen is that my voice is heard, to see a proposal and vote for it, and participate in that way,” she said. “Freedom of expression, it’s the most beautiful thing that we have.”  By the time Rivera was taking the oath, the Trump administration had begun to tone down its rhetoric on immigration and make changes to leadership at DHS. She said she was thinking that day of people outside of the courtroom, people she knows who don’t have a path to naturalization. “The more of us that become citizens, the more people there are who can speak up on their behalf,” she said. Each judge approaches the ceremony differently. Some give speeches, emphasizing the duty of serving on juries, for example. Oliver kept it simple at a Feb. 6 ceremony, sharing a favorite quote. It came from abolitionist Frederick Douglass, then on a speaking tour in the years after the Civil War, as he advocated for equality and the inclusion of Chinese immigrants to the U.S. “In a composite nation like ours, made up of almost every variety of the human family, there should be, as before the law, no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no black, no white, but one country, one citizenship, with equal rights and a common destiny for all.”  ...read more read less