“Twenty-six years ago, I touched down at Eastern Iowa Airport,” Dr. Sunday Goshit told the people gathered on the Ped Mall Friday morning. Goshit, an adjunct assistant professor of International Studies at the University of Iowa and an instructor of Intercultural Competence at Kirkwood Community College, recalled how he arrived in Iowa “with a suitcase and a specific plan: to earn a Ph.D. in Physical Geography and return home to Nigeria.”
“At the time, I viewed America as a classroom. I didn’t yet know it would become my home.”
In 2001, Goshit’s wife Regina and their four children joined him in Iowa City. Goshit did earn his Ph.D. at UI, along with two masters degrees. He also earned three certificates and an associate’s degree from Kirkwood. And over the past quarter century, he has become an integral part of the community in Johnson County.
Goshit has served as president of IC Compassion, a nonprofit that assists immigrants and refugees. He currently serves as president of the Iowa City Foreign Relations County and is on the community advisory board of UIHC’s Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center. He’s worked to help international students and scholars adjust to life in Iowa, and provided cultural competency training to schools, local governments and businesses. Goshit is the founder and co-director of Iowa City’s African Festival of Arts and Culture.
Regina Goshit has worked for 16 years providing support and advocating for people with disabilities in Johnson County. The Goshits are very active in the Church of Nazrene. All four of their children are now successful adults with masters degrees.
Despite all of the above, and the fact Sunday and Regina Goshit had cleared every hurdle in the process of applying for U.S. citizenship, their swearing-in as citizens, scheduled for January, was abruptly canceled by the Trump administration in December.
Because the Goshits have been such an active part of the community, a crowd gathered on short notice on Friday for a Ped Mall news conference in which Sunday Goshit announced he and his wife are suing the Trump administration to force U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency in charge of the naturalization process, to follow the law and its own regulations and allow the Goshits to complete the process and become citizens.
“No one deserves U.S citizenship more than him,” Peter Gerlach, executive director of the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, said at the news conference. “Because he embodies the values and the work ethic that make America great. He is the best of us. Sunday Goshit is a leader and educator and a mentor who puts others before himself, all in service to a higher calling.”
Gerlach said that between Goshit’s decades of nonprofit work and teaching and mentoring, “the lives he has touched and inspired are too many to count.”
Gerlach, a longtime friend and colleague of Goshit, grew emotional.
“My best friend Sunday Goshit became an American in spirit and character a long time ago,” he said.
The Goshits were given permanent resident status in 2020. On April 25, 2025, they filed their applications to become naturalized citizens. They underwent the final interviews in the naturalization process on Oct. 22. Both Sunday and Regina received letters from the USCIS informing them their swearing-in ceremony would take place at the Federal Courthouse in Cedar Rapids on Jan. 16.
“The immigration system is difficult and complicated, and the Goshits have made sure that they were in compliance at all times,” Laurel Jenks explained at the news conference. “They did everything the right way.”
Jenks is one of three law student practitioners from the UI College of Law working on the Goshits’ case, alongside Katherine Melly Goettel, an assistant clinical associate professor at the college and director of the Federal Impact Litigation Clinic. Goettel is a nationally recognized expert on immigration law and is chair of the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s Federal Court Litigation Section.
“Less than a month before [the Goshits] were to take the oath, they received a notice with just a few sentences,” Jenks said. “This notice stated that the government was canceling their oath ceremony.”
According to the complaint filed on behalf of the Goshits on Friday, the notice was just “a two-sentence explanation for the cancellation, providing no reason outside of ‘unforeseen circumstances.’ The cancellation came on the heels of a presidential proclamation that placed Nigeria on a list of restricted countries and paused immigration benefits for foreign nationals.”
On Dec. 16, President Trump issued a proclamation restricting “entry and visa issuance of foreign nationals from other thirty-nine countries, Nigeria being one of them.”
“The administration cites the radical Islamic terrorist group, Boko Haram — an organization that became active in 2002 — and visa overstays as the reasons for suspending Nigerian immigrant and nonimmigrant visas.”
The Goshits received the notice informing them their naturalization ceremony was canceled on Dec. 18, two days after Trump issued his proclamation. Neither of the cited reasons in the proclamation have anything to do with the Goshits and their application for citizenship. And since the Goshits were neither filing to enter the country and weren’t seeking a visa, no part of the proclamation should have applied to them.
Responding earlier this month to a letter from the Goshits’ legal representatives, USCIS cited a policy memo it issued in late December after the Goshits received the cancellation notice. According to the policy memo, the agency was “placing a ‘hold’ on all pending benefit applications for foreign nationals listed” prior to “final adjudication” of their immigration status. But this shouldn’t apply either, since the Goshits had already received the final adjudication of their cases after they passed their interviews in October.
“There are rules that government agencies have to follow,” Jenks said. “A lot of them are rules that they’ve developed for themselves. However, they are still required to follow those rules. That is not what happened here.”
Sunday Goshit said he placed his “full faith in the ability and independence of the judiciary to adjudicate this matter and act justly, ensuring that the law serves as a shield for those who have honored it.”
“To pass the test of citizenship, only to have the gates locked without legal justification is a secondary exile,” he said. “It creates a state of legal limbo that affects my ability to travel, my peace of mind and the full realization of the American dream that I already spent half my life building.”
“I’ve met every requirement, I’ve checked every box, I’ve contributed my expertise, my character and a legacy of educated, hardworking citizens to the state of Iowa. To halt the naturalization of a prepared, qualified and vetted resident of 25 years is a suppression of the very due process this country prides itself on.”
The Trump administration has two months to respond to the lawsuit filed on Friday.
