Aspirant Americans tell of exclusions from ceremonies by sudden policy introduced on ‘security’ grounds

The occasion should have been marked by the joy of reaching the destination of US citizenship following the long odyssey of immigration.

Instead, the ceremony at Boston’s Faneuil Hall – renowned as a “cradle of liberty” for its role as a protest hub in the run-up to the American revolution – felt like a nightmarish end of the road for some aspirant new Americans who had turned up full of hope.