That is what is required before the school can give out any federal loans or Pell grants or SEOG, so I don’t know why it would be different for federal money under CARES. There are several threads on here, mostly from kids who became citizens but were born somewhere else and their SSA records don’t show them as citizens, and the way to fix it is to show your documentation to the FA office. @kelsmom can confirm.
Because one of my kids is adopted from overseas, we know several students who ran into this when applying for federal aid (and driver’s licenses, and federal jobs). My daughter was fortunate that it didn’t happen to her as I correctly changed her status with SSA from ‘not a citizen but allowed to work’ to ‘citizen’ years before she went to college, but sometimes SSA is not as careful about these things as it should be. It doesn’t happen as much anymore as kids adopted from many countries (not all) are citizens when they enter the country, so they are citizens when they get their SSN. But it happens, and the rule is that the college has to see the passport or other authorizing document like a certificate of citizenship, but not a copy or fax, before authorizing any federal aid. I would never, ever, send those documents to a FA office to be lost in the mail room but others can make their own choice about letting those document out out their possession.