Lawyers representing a Latino advocacy group told a federal judge on Tuesday that tens of thousands of people in and around New York City, most of them Latino, were at risk of being disenfranchised in the November elections because the federal government was taking so long to process their citizenship applications.

The lawyers asked the judge to compel federal immigration authorities to speed up the process to ensure that eligible applicants receive their citizenship before Oct. 10, the deadline in New York for registering to vote in November’s general election.

At stake are the applications of at least 55,000 people in the New York City area who have been waiting at least six months — and as long as four years — for their documents to be processed, the lawyers said.

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