President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he would move to “permanently pause migration” from what he described as “poor nations”, following the fatal shooting of a National Guard member near the White House on Wednesday.
In a series of remarks posted on his Truth Social platform on Thanksgiving night, Trump blamed the attack — which left one Guard member dead and another critically injured — on what he called lax immigration vetting procedures.
The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national who entered the US after the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, is facing criminal charges in the shooting.
Trump said the United States should no longer accept migrants from “failed nations,” writing that many foreign-born residents were “on welfare, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels.” He did not cite specific data to support those claims.
The attack occurred on Wednesday afternoon near Farragut Square in Washington, DC, where National Guard troops had been deployed under Trump administration orders to address what federal officials described as rising public safety concerns. One of the soldiers, Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died of her injuries on Thursday, while Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, remains hospitalized in critical condition.
The suspect, Lakanwal, was a former member of a CIA-backed Afghan paramilitary unit and entered the United States through Operation Allies Welcome, the Biden administration’s resettlement program for Afghans who worked with U.S. forces. Officials have said he later applied for asylum, which was approved during the Trump administration.
Trump, who has made immigration a central theme of his presidency and reelection campaign, said in his post that the current asylum system poses a threat to national security and that broader restrictions are needed.
