(AFP) – US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he would suspend migration from what he called “third world countries”, a day after an Afghan national allegedly shot two National Guard soldiers in Washington, killing one. His social media post, which also threatened to reverse “millions” of admissions granted under his predecessor Joe Biden, marked a new escalation in the anti-migration stance.
Trump said earlier that Sarah Beckstrom, a 20-year-old West Virginia National Guard member deployed in Washington as part of his crackdown on crime, had died from her wounds. The FBI has launched an international terror investigation as new details emerged about the alleged gunman, a 29-year-old Afghan national who was a member of the “Zero Units” — a CIA-backed counterterrorism group, according to multiple US media reports. The shooting on Wednesday, which officials described as an “ambush-style” attack, has brought together three politically explosive issues: Trump’s controversial use of the military at home, immigration, and the legacy of the US war in Afghanistan.
“I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover,” Trump wrote on social media. He linked the shooting and his decision to send hundreds of National Guard troops to the city. “If they weren’t effective, you probably wouldn’t have had this done,” Trump said. “Maybe this man was upset because he couldn’t practice crime.”
Joseph Edlow, Trump’s director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, said on Thursday he had ordered a “full-scale, rigorous reexamination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern.” His agency later pointed to a list of 19 countries — including Afghanistan, Cuba, Haiti, Iran, and Myanmar — facing US travel restrictions under a previous order from Trump in June. More than 1.6 million US green card holders, roughly 12 percent of the total permanent resident population, were born in the countries listed, according to the latest immigration data available on the agency’s “Eligible to Naturalize Dashboard” analyzed by AFP. Cuba accounts for the largest share, with about 560,000 green card holders, followed by Haiti (235,000) and Venezuela (153,000). Afghanistan, which has over 116,000 green card holders, is also affected by a total halt of immigration application processing, ordered by the Trump administration after the shooting.
The other soldier wounded in Wednesday’s attack, 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe, was “fighting for his life,” Trump said. The suspected shooter was also in serious condition. The US attorney for Washington DC, Jeanine Pirro, said the suspected assailant, identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, had been living in the western state of Washington and had driven across the country to the capital. In what she called a “brazen and targeted” attack, Pirro said the gunman opened fire with a .357 Smith and Wesson revolver on a group of guardsmen on patrol just a few blocks from the White House. Officials said they still had no clear understanding of the motive behind the shooting.
CIA director John Ratcliffe said the suspect had been part of a CIA-backed “partner force” fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and had been brought to the US as part of a program to evacuate Afghans who had worked with the agency. The heads of the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security and other senior Trump appointees all insisted that Lakanwal had been granted unvetted access to the US because of lax asylum policies in the wake of the chaotic final US withdrawal from Afghanistan under former president Biden. However, AfghanEvac, a group that helped resettle Afghans in the US after the military withdrawal, said they had undergone “some of the most extensive security vetting” of any migrants.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting that 500 more troops would deploy to Washington, bringing the total to 2,500. Trump has deployed troops to several cities, all run by Democrats, including Washington, Los Angeles, and Memphis. The move has prompted multiple lawsuits and allegations of authoritarian overreach by the White House.
– Maria DANILOVA
© 2024 AFP
