Naturalizations have dropped sharply under Trump, keeping 380,000 potential voters off the rolls

The Trump administration cut naturalization sharply over the past year, leading to accusations it’s holding back hundreds of thousands of people who might have voted in the midterms.

It’s hard to say how those people might have voted had they become U.S. citizens. Naturalized citizens voted Democratic for president by a wide margin in 2020, but in a shift almost half voted for President Donald Trump in 2024, according to a Pew Research Center analysis last year. However, recent elections in immigrant areas in Florida and New Jersey show a return to traditional Democratic voting patterns as anger mounts over mass arrests and deportations of non-criminal immigrants.

The most recent quarterly report from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services shows the agency approved about 55,000 requests for citizenship between April and June, compared with more than 230,000 for the same period last year. 

Naturalizations began dropping late last year as USCIS started a new, longer process for applicants, including screening social media accounts for “anti-American activities,” and requirements for more English language and civics knowledge, USCIS spokesperson Zach Kahler told Stateline in a statement. 

The potential impact: Almost 380,000 immigrants might have become citizens — and therefore voters — over the past year had the approval rate stayed the same. Almost all would have been potential midterm voters since only adults can complete the naturalization process recorded in statistics — children can get naturalized citizenship in other ways based on their parents’ status. 

The processing delays come amid broader attacks by the Trump administration related to voting and citizenship, with officials attempting to block some ballots from being counted and threatening election officials with prosecution. This week, a coalition of civil rights groups accused the administration of targeting naturalized citizens, saying legitimate voters might be disenfranchised. 

Had USCIS processed naturalization applications this past year at the rate it has in the past, significantly more new U.S. citizens could be voting on Election Day.

The potential difference of 380,000 voters is calculated by the lag between about 871,000 new citizens approved between mid-2024 and mid-2025 — including during parts of the Biden and second Trump administrations — and the latest year, with about 481,000 approvals. 

Kahler, the USCIS spokesperson, defended the slowdown.

“Naturalization is a privilege, not a right,” Kahler wrote in the statement to Stateline. “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is reinforcing robust screening and vetting and has implemented reforms to ensure U.S. citizenship is reserved for those who qualify.”  

Changes he mentioned include reestablishment of a civics test, reinforcing English language proficiency requirements, screening applicants’ social media and “ensuring applicants demonstrate good moral character and attachment to the Constitution,” he wrote, adding that “USCIS will not take shortcuts in the naturalization process.” 

An immigrant advocacy group, the National Partnership for New Americans, said the result is fewer immigrants gaining voting privileges and other rights with citizenship.  

“The administration is deliberately extending wait times across the naturalization process — including significant delays between interview approval and the Oath of Allegiance — in an apparent effort to deny otherwise eligible people their civil and voting rights,” the organization wrote in October. 

Nicole Melaku, the partnership’s executive director, told Stateline that “we see a very clear attempt to curb legal pathways, including who gets to the finish line on naturalization. The stark decline (in new approvals) shows that reality.”

About 10% of eligible voters, 25 million, are naturalized immigrants as of 2024, according to an Oct. 27 Pew Research Center report, up steadily since 2000, when it was 6.2%. 

The share of voters is especially prevalent in California (22%), New Jersey (20%), New York (19%), Florida (17%) and Hawaii (16%), according to the Pew report.

In the latest U.S. Census Bureau estimates released Oct. 29, there were large shifts in the way respondents reported naturalized status between mid-2024 and mid-2025 in the opening months of the new Trump administration. 

About 1.2 million fewer immigrants said they were noncitizens and about 1.3 million more said they were naturalized citizens. The change was especially lopsided in Texas, where 155,000 fewer people said they were noncitizens but an additional 244,000 said they were naturalized citizens. 

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The monthly survey reached about 1.7 million households last year, fewer than the usual 2 million partly because of government shutdown issues, with a questionnaire requesting names of people in the home.

It’s hard to read how many people are really new citizens, and how many may have feared telling government surveyors that they are not citizens. 

The change in reported naturalized citizens, 1.3 million, outstrips the 870,000 new naturalizations reported by USCIS between mid-2024 and mid-2025, according to Stateline calculations. 

Lloyd Potter, Texas state demographer, said it’s likely some people were afraid to report their true status this year. 

“We had a change in administration and kind of an uptick in terms of detention and deportation of unauthorized immigrants,” Potter told Stateline. “I think probably that created a situation where people who were noncitizens might say, on a survey, ‘Yeah, I’m a citizen.’” 

About 11% of Texas voters were naturalized citizens in 2024, according to the Pew Research Center report. 

Christopher Dick, a consultant for the University of Florida’s state-funded Bureau of Economic and Business Research, said it’s also possible more noncitizens didn’t respond at all to the survey, which would make it seem like a larger proportion of immigrants were citizens, distorting the survey.  

As far as the cutbacks in new citizen numbers before the midterms, Steven Camerota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies – a think tank that favors less immigration – said it’s part of a pattern of extreme presidential power seen in recent decades. He maintains that Democratic presidents have also used their powers to influence immigration policy and that a divided Congress has not used its powers to halt the pattern.

“We’re in a period here of executive dominance,” Camerota said. “When you have a situation where Congress is willing to surrender all its powers, this is the result.”

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at [email protected].