50 Immigrants Sworn In as Citizens at Port Washington HS

Fifty immigrants from 25 countries stood in a high school auditorium in Port Washington last Thursday and became Americans. No courtroom, no bureaucratic waiting room. Just a school stage, student musicians, and a federal judge who understood exactly what the moment meant.

The naturalization ceremony at Paul D. Schreiber High School on March 26 was the first of its kind at that school and only the second time a public school in Nassau County has hosted a federal naturalization proceeding. U.S. Magistrate Judge James M. Wicks presided, administering the Oath of Allegiance to candidates who had traveled from countries across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas to get to this moment.

“This is a historic naturalization ceremony,” Wicks said. “It’s particularly special to do it outside the confines of a courtroom, and even more special to do it at a school like yours.”

He’s right. And in the current political climate, where immigration dominates every cable news cycle and Washington treats the subject like a weapon, this ceremony was a useful reminder of what the process actually looks like up close. These are not abstractions. These are people who went through the system, completed the requirements, and earned their citizenship. That deserves recognition.

The event was organized through a collaboration between the federal court for the Eastern District of New York, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Justice for All: Courts and the Community Initiative, a program founded by former Chief Judge Robert A. Katzmann. The Justice for All program exists specifically to pull the judiciary out of its marble-walled isolation and bring it into communities where people can actually see how it works. Taking a naturalization ceremony into a public school is exactly the kind of civic transparency that should happen more often.

The district made full use of the occasion. The ceremony was livestreamed across Port Washington schools, letting students in classrooms throughout the district watch in real time. High school students led the Pledge of Allegiance and handed out American flags to the new citizens after the oath. The school band performed. This was not a field trip. This was a civics lesson that no standardized test could measure.

Superintendent Gaurav Passi, himself a naturalized citizen, put it plainly: “There’s no lesson or textbook that can replicate this moment. Citizenship is much more than a formal legal proceeding. It’s an invitation to take part, to contribute and to help shape the place and its future.”

Passi called the oath both “an ending and a beginning,” and that framing cuts to the heart of what naturalization actually is. The paperwork ends. The obligations begin.

That message has political weight worth acknowledging. Long Island’s immigrant communities have fueled this region’s economy for generations. The North Shore has seen wave after wave of newcomers from Italy, Korea, Central America, South Asia, and dozens of other places, many of whom worked, raised families, and eventually became citizens. Their kids filled these same schools. This ceremony is not some outlier event. It is Long Island’s actual history repeating itself in real time.

The politicians who treat immigration solely as a crisis narrative should be required to attend a ceremony like this one. Not to change their policy positions, but simply to see what legal immigration looks like when it works. Fifty people, 25 countries, one oath. The system functioning as designed.

U.S. Circuit Judge Joseph Bianco also addressed the new citizens, speaking to the significance of the occasion both personally and nationally.

What happened in Port Washington last Thursday was not a political statement. It was a federal court proceeding held in a community setting, administered by judges who wanted the public to witness something worth witnessing. The students in that auditorium and the classrooms watching the livestream got something their textbooks cannot provide: proof that the civic machinery of this country still runs, and that people still want to be part of it.

Nassau County should push for more of these ceremonies. Every public school district on Long Island should want this experience for its students. It costs nothing and teaches everything.