The Trump administration on Thursday said it would reexamine green cards linked to 19 countries after two National Guard members were shot outside of a metro station blocks from the White House.
“At the direction of @POTUS, I have directed a full scale, rigorous reexamination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Joseph Edlow wrote in a post on the social platform X.
“The protection of this country and of the American people remains paramount, and the American people will not bear the cost of the prior administration’s reckless resettlement policies. American safety is non-negotiable,” he added in a follow-up post.
A June memo from the Trump administration listed 19 countries of concern with entry restrictions. The nations highlighted include Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
The move comes after the suspected shooter who targeted two National Guard members on Wednesday was named as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who entered the United States in September 2021 through the program “Operation Allies Welcome.”
President Trump and Vice President Vance have slammed the Biden administration for presiding over the immigration policy that welcomed Afghan refugees, while USCIS immediately suspended all immigration applications from Afghan nationals.
“I remember back in 2021 criticizing the Biden policy of opening the floodgate to unvetted Afghan refugees,” Vance said.
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“Friends sent me messages calling me a racist. It was a clarifying moment. They shouldn’t have been in our country.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi said they are seeking the death penalty for Lakanwal. Reports allege that he previously served in one of Afghanistan’s elite counterterrorism units, according to #AfghanEvac, a nonprofit run by U.S. veterans and others who served in Afghanistan.
“This subject had a relationship in Afghanistan with partner forces,” FBI Director Kash Patel said on Wednesday, according to NPR. “We are fully investigating that aspect of his background as well, to include any known associates that are either overseas or who are here in the United States of America.”
Before the shooting, the Trump administration on Tuesday ordered USCIS to “re-interview” some 200,000 refugees who entered the country, according to a memo obtained by The Hill. The memo suggested that refugees’ protections could be stripped.
