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USCIS Director Warned Citizenship Test Was Too Easy
Long before the attack, USCIS Director Joseph Edlow had been raising alarms about the lax citizenship process. In August 2025, he told Fox News Digital, “The test needs to reflect the letter and the spirit of what Congress intended. It’s important for people to understand English, our history, our government … and the way the test is written and executed right now doesn’t meet that bar.”
Under the Biden-era system, applicants had to answer just six out of ten randomly selected civics questions — one sentence read aloud and one written. That was the low threshold for earning U.S. citizenship.
Tougher Civics Test Implemented Under Trump Administration
Edlow’s reforms, enacted under President Trump’s USCIS, raised the bar significantly. The 2025 Naturalization Civics Test doubled the number of questions from 10 to 20, expanded the question bank from 100 to 128, and required at least 12 correct answers to pass.
New questions probe deeper understanding of U.S. history and foreign policy, asking applicants why America entered the Vietnam War and the Persian Gulf War. Simple geography questions like “What ocean is on the West Coast?” were removed. English proficiency is now evaluated throughout the entire interview, rather than just through a single read-aloud exercise.
“Switch up some of the wording and see if the individuals are still able to comprehend the questions,” Edlow explained. “That’s a better gauge of readiness.”
Addressing Backlogs and H-1B Abuse
Edlow isn’t just focused on tests. He is also tackling a USCIS backlog that ballooned to over 11 million pending cases — a problem he called “nothing short of a national security threat to this country.” During the Biden administration, resources were diverted away from legal immigration processing to handle record-breaking illegal border crossings, leaving long delays and unvetted cases in the system.
The administration is also cracking down on H-1B visa abuses. In July 2025, JD Vance highlighted Microsoft laying off 9,000 American workers while applying for 4,700 H-1B visas. The Trump White House responded with a $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions to curb systemic exploitation that “undermined both our economic and national security.”
Preventable Tragedy Highlights Broken System
The Old Dominion attack was not caused by a failure in the citizenship vetting process itself — Jalloh had become a citizen years before radicalization. It was the lax enforcement after his release that proved fatal. A convicted ISIS supporter, under minimal supervision, slipped through gaps created by a system built under Democratic leadership, where enforcement was treated as optional rather than essential.
Edlow’s reforms aim to fix these gaps. A stricter citizenship test screens out those who haven’t genuinely assimilated. Continuous English evaluation ensures comprehension beyond a single sentence read-aloud. Public charge rules and neighborhood checks verify applicants’ intentions and integration.
Where Democrats prioritized speed over security, Trump’s administration focused on ensuring only those who truly belong in America are admitted. Lt. Col. Brandon Shah, a devoted officer and father, deserved a system strong enough to protect him.
