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refugees
Afghan Community in US 'Terrified' as Xenophobic Trump Exploits DC Shooting
"Exploiting a single incident to cast suspicion on Afghans—people who have already endured decades of displacement and America's forever wars—is both irresponsible and cruel."
Nov 28, 2025
Advocates for refugees in the United States continued to raise alarm Friday after President Donald Trump moved quickly to exploit the murder of one National Guard soldier and the wounding of another—allegedly shot by a national from Afghanistan who worked for the US military and CIA during the war there before seeking asylum in the US—by issuing a sweeping ban against asylum-seekers and halting all immigration from what he termed "all Third World countries" in response to Wednesday's shooting in Washington, DC.
“Regardless of the alleged perpetrator’s nationality, religion or specific legal status," said Matthew Soerens, a vice president with the faith-based World Relief, speaking with the Associated Press, "we urge our country to recognize these evil actions as those of one person, not to unfairly judge others who happen to share those same characteristics.”
Shawn VanDiver, president of the San Diego-based group AfghanEvac, a group that helps resettle Afghans who assisted the US during the war in Afghanistan, explained to the AP that many people in the Afghan refugee community that he knows are terrified by the tone which has been set by Trump after the shooting, afraid to leave their homes for fear of being snatched up by federal agents or otherwise targeted.
“They’re terrified. It’s insane,” VanDiver told AP. “People are acting xenophobic because of one deranged man. He doesn’t represent all Afghans. He represents himself.”
"The perpetrator should face accountability, but the entire Afghan community must not be punished due to the actions of one individual." —Richard Bennett, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan
On Thursday, it was announced that Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, deployed with the National Guard under orders from Trump, had died from her injuries while Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, remained in critical condition in a local hospital.
While heartbreak and mourning were widely shared for the victims of the shooting, Trump's xenophobic response to the violent assault, including his racist social media posts on Truth Social that critics said echoed white nationalist rhetoric, proved, for many observers, once again his shortcomings as a national leader during times of crisis, but also as a human being.
"The perpetrator should face accountability, but the entire Afghan community must not be punished due to the actions of one individual," said Richard Bennett, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, on Thursday. "That would be terribly unjust and complete nonsense. Cool heads must prevail."
Arash Azizzada, co-director of Afghans For A Better Tomorrow, which long-opposed the US war in Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 and continues to advocate on behalf of the Afghan-American community, condemned Trump for "using this tragedy as a pretext to demonize, criminalize, and target an entire community. Exploiting a single incident to cast suspicion on Afghans—people who have already endured decades of displacement and America's forever wars—is both irresponsible and cruel."
Azizzada also pointed out how the alleged gunman now in police custody, identified as 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, "worked alongside US Special Operations forces and served in a CIA-backed covert paramilitary group known as 'Zero Units' that functioned outside the purview of any accountability and has a documented history of widespread human rights abuses against Afghan civilians over two decades."
"We both condemn the violence by one individual on the streets of Washington, DC, as well as the violence perpetrated by the US in Afghanistan and elsewhere," said Azizzada. "America must confront the decades of violence it inflicted on Afghanistan and acknowledge that its forever wars are a major reason why Afghans seek safety here. Blaming refugees for the consequences of those actions is unjust, and we call for the promises to Afghans to be honored, not abandoned."
Journalist Ryan Grim, co-founder of Drop Site News, put it this way: "The idea that we should freeze all migration because one of the CIA’s death squad recruits went on a rampage is absurd. Smarter would be to stop training death squads."
Evacuate Our Allies, a group that advocates on behalf of Afghans who helped the US during the war and now seeking to resettle, expressed deep sympathies for the victims of the shooting and their families and condemned the "reprehensible attack." The group also denounced the "alarming vilification of an entire community based on the actions of a lone individual."
"No community, Afghan or otherwise, should be judged, demonized, or collectively punished for the behavior of one person," the group said. "Such narratives cause real harm, inflame tensions, and overlook the truth: one individual does not represent millions. Collective blame is not only unjust but dangerous. It undermines the immense sacrifices our nation's Afghan allies made, sacrifices that cost many their safety, their homes, their loved ones, and, in too many cases, their lives."
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Trump's Thanksgiving Attack on Immigrants Likened to 'Stuff You Hear Coming Out of White Nationalists'
"Completely identical language," said one observer.
Nov 28, 2025
US President Donald Trump wasted little time exploiting the shooting of two National Guard troops to advance his lawless assault on immigrants and refugees, pledging on Thanksgiving Day to "permanently pause migration from all Third World countries" and expedite the removal of people his administration doesn't see as "a net asset" to the United States.
The president announced his proposal in a series of unhinged, racism-laced posts on his social media platform a day after two members of the West Virginia National Guard were shot in Washington, DC. The suspect was identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who worked with CIA-backed military units in Afghanistan and was granted asylum earlier this year by the Trump administration.
Trump ignored that fact in his Truth Social tirade, blaming his predecessor for Lakanwal's presence in the US and using the shooting to broadly smear migrants and refugees.
"These goals will be pursued with the aim of achieving a major reduction in illegal and disruptive populations, including those admitted through an unauthorized and illegal Autopen approval process," Trump wrote. "Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation. Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for—You won’t be here for long!"
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, highlighted Trump's "outrageous claim" that most of the immigrant population in the US is "on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels."
"As insulting as the 'deplorables' comment, and on Thanksgiving Day no less," said Reichlin-Melnick. "This rhetoric is indistinguishable from the stuff you hear coming out of white nationalists. Completely identical language."
How Trump's rant will be translated into policy is unclear. Reuters reported Thursday that Trump "has ordered a widespread review of asylum cases approved under former President Joe Biden's administration and Green Cards issued to citizens of 19 countries."
Like the president, his administration did not provide a specific list of nations, but it pointed Reuters to "a travel ban Trump imposed in June on citizens of 19 countries, including Afghanistan, Burundi, Laos, Togo, Venezuela, Sierra Leone, and Turkmenistan."
Trump's posts came days after US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced plans to reinterview hundreds of thousands of refugees admitted into the country under former President Joe Biden.
The advocacy group Refugees International condemned the move as "a vindictive, harmful, and wasteful attack on people throughout US communities who have fled persecution and cleared some of the most rigorous security checks in the world."
"The decision retraumatizes families, undermines faith in the legal immigration system, disrupts integration, and misuses taxpayer dollars to scrutinize valuable new members of American communities," the group added. "This is part of the Trump administration’s unprecedented delegalization of people who arrived on humanitarian pathways and erodes the US as a nation of refuge."
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After DC Shooting, Trump Sends More Troops and Pledges Crackdown on Afghan Immigrants
"We have no idea what this man’s motive was at this point, and yet the Trump administration is already moving to paint every Afghan as a threat to this country," said one immigrant rights advocate.
Nov 27, 2025
Following Wednesday's shooting of two National Guard troops in Washington, DC, President Donald Trump has responded with a pair of authoritarian measures: flooding the city with hundreds more guard members and pledging a crackdown against Afghan immigrants.
A suspect is in custody after firing at the two guard members outside the White House, which left them in critical condition. The suspect—who was also shot and is now hospitalized—has been identified by law enforcement as 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who relatives say served alongside US troops in Afghanistan during America's two-decade war. According to senior law enforcement agents, the shooting is being investigated as a potential act of terrorism.
Within hours of the shooting, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the Trump administration was deploying an additional 500 National Guard troops to DC, adding to the 2,200 that are already present as part of what Trump has claimed is a crackdown on surging crime.
In reality, crime had fallen to record lows in the city for over a year before Trump sent in the troops this past August over the objections of DC officials. This week the president falsely claimed that the city had not had a single homicide since his troop surge began.
In comments to the Guardian, Gary Goodweather, a Democratic candidate in next year's mayoral election and a former US Army captain who served in the National Guard, said Trump's deployment of troops against US citizens made such a backlash inevitable.
"If I’m completely honest, we’ve been expecting this. It hurts me to the core,” he said. “Look around us. These are citizens, they’re residents, they’re human beings. Activating the United States military against people within our own country, within Washington, DC, is the wrong message.”
He added that he feared sending even more troops would just "inflame" tensions further.
David Janovsky, acting director of the Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight, described the response as an unnecessary overreach.
"No one should be harmed just for doing their job, and our thoughts are with them and their families," he said of the two guard members. "At the same time, we do not believe that sending even more troops into the city is the solution. By sending more troops in, the administration risks inflaming tensions and undermining civil rights. As more information comes to light about this despicable tragedy, we urge against the administration putting more armed troops on our street corners.”
The new surge of federal troops follows a court ruling issued last week by US District Judge Jia Cobb, who wrote that the Trump administration “exceeded the bounds of their authority” and “acted contrary to law” by deploying the National Guard “for nonmilitary, crime-deterrence missions in the absence of a request from the city’s civil authorities.”
That ruling barred the Trump administration from sending any more troops to DC. However, it is delayed from going into effect until December 11 to give the administration time to appeal.
Thus far, no motive for the attack has been determined. But Trump has already begun to use it to stoke fears about Afghan immigrants.
“We must now reexamine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under [former President Joe] Biden,” Trump said in an address Wednesday night in which he called the shooting an “act of terror.” The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) then announced that "effective immediately, processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals is stopped indefinitely pending further review of security and vetting protocols.”
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem claimed via social media that Lakanwal, the alleged shooter, was "mass paroled into the United States under Operation Allies Welcome," the program to allow Afghans who served alongside the US military to seek refuge in the US following the Taliban's return to power in 2021. According to a June 2025 audit by the Office of the Inspector General, around 90,000 "vulnerable" Afghans were admitted to the US under the program.
While Noem said those admitted under the program were "unvetted," this is untrue. As the audit shows, the program assigned several agencies to screen evacuees, check terror watch lists and criminal history, and attempt identity verification. It stated that in cases where it discovered evacuees on terror watch lists, "in each of these cases, we determined that the FBI notified the appropriate external agencies at the time of watch list identification and followed all required internal processes to mitigate any potential threat."
Trump's pledge to reexamine every Afghan who entered the US under Biden came just days after his administration announced that it was freezing the distribution of green cards for over 235,000 refugees for what it said was “detailed screening and vetting,” even though residents who arrive through the refugee process are already among the most heavily vetted immigrants who enter the United States.
Speaking of the alleged DC shooter, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said: "We have no idea what this man’s motive was at this point, and yet the Trump administration is already moving to paint every Afghan as a threat to this country. This comes as the country has dealt with dozens of mass shootings this year alone, carried out by people of varied origins."
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