The immigration process for hundreds in Central Florida and thousands across the country has ground to a stop following the Trump administration’s sweeping directive aimed at immigrants from 19 countries dubbed high-risk.

As the region’s largest of the listed groups, Venezuelans and Haitians awaiting their asylum, green card or naturalization ceremonies discovered this week they were canceled with no new date set, leaving them in limbo and vulnerable, immigration attorneys said. A naturalization ceremony on Thursday in Orlando moved forward with immigrants from 36 countries, but none of the 19 on the Trump administration list.

Florida is home to the country’s largest population of Haitians and Venezuelans, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute. The greater Orlando region has the state’s second largest community of Haitians with over 41,000. Similarly over 64,000 Venezuelans call Central Florida home, also the second largest concentration in the state.

A Venezuelan man living in Central Florida who is married to a U.S. citizen had been waiting years for his green card interview. But on Thursday his Kissimmee-based immigration attorney, Ingrid Morfa, learned his interview next week has been canceled. His online case status read simply “we cancelled or descheduled the interview” and said he will be notified “if the appointment is rescheduled.”

“It’s just disastrous,” Morfa said. “I think that’s a way to try and halt our immigration adjudication and scare people.”

His case is not the only one. Another Venezuelan client of Morfa’s had a successful interview last week for his green card but now his case cannot move forward, she said. Her office is receiving 20 to 30 more calls per day than usual from people wondering if their immigration status has changed.

Wilfredo Allen, a Cuban-American lawyer based in Miami, said he received a notice that the naturalization ceremony scheduled for Wednesday for one of his clients, a Cuban woman, had been canceled, the Miami Herald reported. Another attorney, Patricia Elizée, told the Herald that two Haitian clients expecting to become citizens on Friday also learned their ceremony had been scuttled.

The Tuesday Dec. 2 order from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services came just a week after an Afghan national allegedly shot two National Guard personnel in Washington, killing one. “We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” President Trump said in a cabinet meeting Tuesday.

The order pauses all immigration cases including green card applications and work permits for individuals from the 19 named countries. It also halted all asylum applications nationwide regardless of the individual’s country of origin. And it calls for every single application for refugee status approved back to 2021 for individuals from those restricted countries to be reevaluated, although it is not clear what that will entail.

Those who have a pending asylum case or are from the list of restricted countries who are waiting to get naturalized cannot leave the country and reenter, Morfa said. The directive places huge numbers of immigrants in legal limbo, vulnerable to being swept up in immigration raids and possibly deported, Morfa said.

“If you’re not a full American, you’re not completely safe in this country,” Morfa said. “That’s the nature of things right now so people feel stuck and they don’t feel safe.”

Many nationals from those 19 countries already were encountering increased scrutiny under the Trump administration. Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela faced partial bans affecting tourist, business, and student visas; while nationals from Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen faced full visa suspensions for immigrant and non-immigrant categories.

Congressman Carlos Gimenez, a Miami Republican serving on the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement this week that he has “requested details from DHS on how these rules will be implemented.”

“My position has remained that all lawful migrants from Cuba, Venezuela & Nicaragua should have their asylum cases weighed on a case-by-case basis,” he said. “The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 provides a codified, legal framework for Cuban exiles to contribute meaningfully to our nation, and I oppose any measure that would undermine it.”

For others, the process continues. In Orlando on Thursday, 84 people representing 36 countries sat in the pews of the ceremonial courtroom of the federal courthouse. They were joined by scores of loved ones packing the corridors and the standing room area along the back wall.

The ceremony went without a hitch. Outside the courtroom were members of the Orange County Supervisor of Elections office to encourage the newly sworn citizens to register to vote. Downstairs, meanwhile, were the Sons of the American Revolution, dressed in garb of that era and offering to celebrate the new citizens with a photograph.

“My fellow citizens, you are the fulfillment of a promise made almost 250 years ago,” said Magistrate Judge Robert Norway, who presided over the ceremony. He was joined by Vincent Chiu, a judge in Florida’s Ninth Judicial Circuit, who told the story of his father, born in what was then called Burma and who worked in restaurants to make a living. “My father,” who since passed, “didn’t live an easy life, but he got to see one child in the white coat of a doctor and another in the black robe of a judge,” Chiu said.

None of the countries read aloud were among the ones on the high-risk list, although the homeland of Chiu’s father, now widely known as Myanmar, faces the highest level of restrictions. Just after the group recited its oath of citizenship, a congratulatory video of President Donald Trump played.

“Today, you receive one of the most priceless gifts ever granted by human hands: you become a citizen of the United States of America. What an honor,” Trump said. “It is with great pride and wisdom — in so many different ways because you have such great wisdom — that I welcome you into our national family.”

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