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New citizens take oath in Bismarck to complete naturalization process • North Dakota Monitor [1]
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Date: 2025-06-30
Sheyla Muñoz Garcia came to the United States from Mexico 15 years ago. All five of her children are U.S. citizens. On Friday, she became a citizen, too.
Muñoz Garcia was one of 40 new U.S. citizens who took the oath of allegiance at the William L. Guy Federal Courthouse in Bismarck to complete the final step of their naturalization process.
She said she decided to become a citizen this year to ensure that her permanent residency status could never be revoked.
“I had my green card and I was just trying to make sure my status is here, you know, because all my kids are Americans,” Muñoz Garcia said.
She said she previously lived in Oklahoma, but decided to raise her family in North Dakota because she felt safe in the Peace Garden State.
“The kids really enjoy the outside at the farm and everything,” she said. Muñoz Garcia just gave birth to her youngest daughter 10 weeks ago and she was overjoyed to have her whole family in the courtroom to see their mother join them as citizens.
The kids are too young to understand the impact of watching her become a citizen, she said, but one of her daughters cried and pleaded with her recently, “I don’t want you to stop being Mexican.”
“I was like, ‘It’s not like that, it doesn’t go away, it’s in our blood. But we have to share great memories with the American culture, too,’” Muñoz Garcia said.
She also celebrated her 28th birthday on Friday, which she said made the naturalization ceremony a “great gift.”
Another new citizen, Jayla Crouse, is from the Philippines and has lived in the United States for seven years. She said she decided to become a citizen because her mother became one last year and she wanted to practice the same rights.
“The United States gave me a lot of opportunities here,” Crouse said. She said she’s studying to become a surgical technician at Bismarck State College and hopes to complete her coursework next year.
Olufemi Akinstan, a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services representative from the Minneapolis field office, was on hand for the ceremony and ensured each new citizen had all of their naturalization paperwork before they left the building.
“It’s a joyful day for us and for the applicants,” Akinstan said.
Many of the new citizens have lived in the U.S for at least five years, he said.
U.S. Chief Judge Peter Welte, who presided over the ceremony, told the new citizens to exercise the new rights granted to them by their citizenship, including the right to free speech, religion, assembly and the right to vote.
“These are rights that you have now,” Welte said. “And it was clear that the founders of this great land, of America, they considered that civic engagement at all levels was going to be vital to the success of this government.”
He said the group of new U.S. citizens came from countries such as Brazil, Canada, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Iraq, Liberia, Mexico, Philippines, Rwanda, Uganda, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.
Ceremonies earlier this week in Fargo were expected to include about 200 new citizens from 51 countries, according to the U.S. District Court.
Welte gave the citizens a brief history of the United States’ conflicts, including the Civil War and its journey of freedom and liberty since its inception. He closed his remarks with a question: How does this story end?
“It’s up to you,” he said. “Because you are now, we the people … and I urge you to make this a story that ends well.”
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