Immigrants sue the White House: their naturalization is unnecessarily delayed

Millions of paper immigration files are stored in a sprawling network of limestone caves around Kansas City. Some of these underground storage facilities have been operating with reduced staff throughout most of the pandemic. CNN.

Photo: Shutterstock

And now a group of people are suing the government, alleging their citizenship applications are still stuck in limbo due to "unreasonable delay" in getting their documents out of the caves and into the hands of immigration authorities.

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“It seems a little overwhelming and shocking that we're still dealing with paper, but we are,” said Leslie Dellon, a senior attorney at the American Immigration Council who represents 13 people who recently filed suit over their naturalization applications. “It’s just very frustrating for these people whose lives have been put on hold.”

This case shows how complex the US immigration system can be, with its layers of bureaucracy and reliance on paper files, which officials admit is slowing down processing and exacerbating backlogs during a pandemic.

The complaint, filed in federal court, says all 13 plaintiffs are stuck "under stress" and are still waiting for USCIS to schedule a citizenship interview more than two years after filing. Dellon says if their immigration history records, known as A-files, aren't received and their interviews aren't scheduled soon, they could lose their chance to take the citizenship oath and register to vote in time to run in the upcoming elections. .

“They want to be able to vote in November, and time is short,” Dellon says. “We felt it was time to take action and file a lawsuit and force the government to prioritize these applications and schedule these people for interviews.”

Dellon says it's likely that the ongoing delays are affecting other people as well. Since the announcement of the lawsuit late last month, her organization has heard complaints from many other people, she said, and she is considering adding them to the case.

Agencies say the backlog is closing and they've made significant progress

The lawsuit comes months after a Wall Street Journal report detailed a backlog in the processing of citizenship applications due to pandemic-related operational restrictions that led to staff cuts at Federal Records Centers (FRCs) located in administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. At the time, the magazine reported that there were 350 requests for immigration files in centers located in underground caverns around Kansas City, Missouri.

Now, officials say, pending requests have dwindled to about 40, centered on hubs in Kansas City and Lee's Summit. Both sites are on track to close the backlog by the end of July, the National Archives said.

The National Archives and USCIS declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing their policy of not commenting on the ongoing lawsuit. But both agencies said they have made significant progress in eliminating delays.

“Now that we have returned to full staffing, we have effectively prioritized all remaining requests and are on track to close the backlog,” the National Archives said in a statement.

USCIS has conducted initial processing of naturalization applications while awaiting receipt of A-files to ensure that the process is completed quickly upon receipt of the documents. Most applications will be first in line for interviews and decisions because they are pending beyond normal processing time, according to USCIS.

Earlier this year, the situation raised concerns from a Massachusetts congressional delegation that sent a letter to the National Archives in February.

“Our constituents have been waiting for many years to become eligible for naturalization,” the lawmakers wrote. “It is truly unfortunate – and unacceptable – that many are now forced to wait significantly longer simply because of where their A-file is located.”

The Archives said in a statement that the use of documentation centers for storage allows government agencies to meet needs in a cost-effective manner.

“The digitization of these records is currently prohibitively expensive,” the statement said.
Why are these caves used for storage.

Limestone caves in the Kansas City area have been used for years to store immigration records.
USCIS opened its National Cave Center Archives in Lees Summit, Missouri, in 1999. When the site celebrated its 2014th anniversary in 15, officials said they had over 20 million files stored there, with 1,5 million new files being added every year.

Archival centers located in nearby limestone caves hold more than 50 million USCIS A files, including more than 1 million A files of immigrants born over 100 years ago and later records.

The caves are the result of extensive limestone mining, which was used for paving and building materials in the late 19th and early 20th century.

According to an archive historian, the caves were largely abandoned after the area's building boom ended and businesses began using the caves for storage in the 1950s. The archive opened its first mine FRC in 1997, historian Jesse Kratz wrote in a 2016 article.

“Since temperatures naturally range from 16 to 21 degrees, significant savings can be made on temperature and humidity control,” Kratz wrote. “In addition, underground storage is less expensive than above-ground storage, with more room for expansion and increased security.”

The Kansas City FRC, one of the institutions where immigration records are kept, is located in a huge underground business complex known as SubTropolis. The complex boasts over 650 square meters of industrial leased space and over 000 square meters available for growth, much larger than the nation's largest malls and stadiums and on par with some of the largest buildings in the world.

Its caves also house car supplier warehouses, data servers, food distribution centers, a pharmaceutical company, and even a paintball and laser tag field.

He is afraid to leave the country while his case is pending.

The Biden administration has said it is committed to making the naturalization process "acceptable and accessible to all who qualify." But the lawsuit alleges that the delays left the applicants feeling frustrated and insecure.

Some plaintiffs say they fear their families may be separated and are afraid to leave the country while their cases are pending.

Ali Mohammed, 28, said he has not returned to Iraq, although his parents still live there and are in poor health. Without a guarantee of citizenship, he said, he fears he could be prevented from returning to the United States due to sudden policy changes, such as travel restrictions that were put in place during the Trump administration.

“It worries me a lot… I don’t want to take risks,” he says.

Mohammed, a Kurdish refugee, came to the United States in 2015. He applied for citizenship in April 2020 as soon as he became eligible to vote and sought to improve his professional prospects.

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Since then, other people he knows have applied and have become citizens, he says. The lawsuit notes that when a congressman asked about the Mohammed case last year, USCIS responded that the case was under "expanded review" and the agency could not make a decision "until certain issues were resolved."

When Mohammed again asked USCIS about delays in his case a few months ago, authorities told him they were still waiting to retrieve his A-file from storage and noted that they were working closely with the National Archives to reduce backlogs at Federal documentation centers.

Mohammed, who lives in Miami Beach, Florida, says he has no criminal record and can't think of a single reason in his past that could delay his case. He works in cybersecurity and says it was amazing to see a system so dependent on pen and paper.

“I know technology can be very effective,” he says. “It shouldn’t be the way things are here.”

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