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When he first came to the United States after escaping the Civil War Sierra Leone And after spending nearly a decade in a refugee camp, Dauda Sesay had no idea he could become a citizen. But they were told that if they followed the rules and stayed out of trouble, they could apply after a few years. Being an American citizen, he will get security.
That’s what made him decide to implement it: the premise – and the promise – that when he became a naturalized American citizen, it would create a bond between him and his new home. He will have rights like voting as well as responsibilities, that just as he is making a commitment towards the country, the country is also making a commitment to him.
“When I raised my hand and took the oath of allegiance, at that moment I believed in the promise I am making,” said Sesay, 44.
But in recent months, as President donald trump As immigration reshapes the country’s relationship with immigrants, that trust has been shaken for Sesay and other naturalized citizens. Now there are fears that the push to drastically increase deportations and relocate those who claim the US as home is having a broader impact, through things like trying to end birthright citizenship.
What he thought was conservation, the basis of naturalization, now seems like quicksand.
What if they leave?
Some are concerned that if they leave the country, they will face difficulties when attempting to return, fearful of being interrogated or detained by US border agents who account for naturalized citizens. They wonder: Do they need to lock their phone to protect their privacy? Others are hesitant to travel within the country, following stories that a US citizen was accused of being here illegally and detained even after his mother showed him his birth certificate.
Sesay said that despite having a Real ID with federally mandated, stringent identification requirements, he no longer travels domestically without his passport.
Immigration enforcement roundups, often conducted by masked, unnamed federal agents, in Chicago and other locations new york The city has also included American citizens in its trap many times. A US citizen who says he was detained twice by immigration agents has filed a federal lawsuit.
increasing concerns, Justice Department A memorandum issued this summer said it would step up efforts to denaturalize immigrants who have committed crimes or are considered a threat to national security. At one point during the summer, Trump threatened citizenship Zohran MamdaniThe 34-year-old democratic socialist mayor-elect of New York City, who naturalized as a young adult.
This environment makes some people anxious about speaking about it publicly for fear of drawing negative attention to themselves. A request for comment through several community organizations and other connections found that no one other than Sesay was willing to go on the record.
In New Mexico, state Senator Cindy Nava says she is familiar with this fear, having grown up undocumented before gaining citizenship through DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program that protects people brought to the U.S. as children — from deportation. But he naturally did not expect to see so much fear among the citizens.
Nava said, “I had never seen those people afraid… Now people I know who weren’t afraid before, now they’re unsure what their situation is in terms of the safety net for them.”
What citizenship means, and who it includes, has expanded and contracted over the course of American history, said Stephen Kantrowitz, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He said the word citizen is in the original Constitution, but it has not been defined.
“When the Constitution was written, no one knew what citizenship meant,” he said. “It’s a term of art, it comes out of the French revolutionary tradition. It suggests in a way the equality of members of a political community, and it has some implications for the right to be a member of that political community. But it’s… so undefined.”
American immigration and its obstacles
The first naturalization law, passed in 1790 by the new nation’s Congress, stated that citizenship was open to any “free white person” of good character. People of African descent or indigenous people were added as a distinct category to federal immigration law following the devastation of the Civil War in the 19th century, which is when the 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution to establish birthright citizenship.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, laws limiting immigration and, by extension, naturalization, were put on the books. The Immigration Act of 1924 effectively banned people from Asia because they were ineligible for naturalization, being neither white nor black. This did not change until 1952, when an immigration law removed racial restrictions on who could be naturalized. The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 replaced the previous immigration system, which divided visas equally between countries.
American history also includes times when people who had citizenship were stripped of their citizenship, such as after the Supreme Court’s decision in the US v. Bhagat Singh Thind case in 1923. That decision stated that Indians could not be naturalized because they were not eligible to be white and led to dozens of denaturalizations. At other times, it was ignored, such as in World War II, when Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps.
Kantrowitz said, “Political power will sometimes simply decide that a group of people, or an individual, or a family is not entitled to citizenship.”
In this moment, Sesay says, it feels like a betrayal.
“The United States of America – this is what I have sworn allegiance to, this is what I make my commitment to,” Sesay said. “Now, inside my home country, and I’m seeing a change… To be honest, this is not the America I believe in when I put my hand on my heart.”