An emboldened Trump escalates his anti-immigration crackdown after National Guard shooting
President Donald Trump speaks to troops via video from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach
By Betsy Klein, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump is doubling down on the aggressive anti-immigration policies that helped deliver him a second term, launching an interagency federal investigation into the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, DC, while also directing his administration to take steps to stem migration into the US.
In the hours following the shooting, an emboldened Trump addressed the American public. He painted a picture of a country overrun with “cuckoo” and “unvetted” migrants and he vowed a crackdown to expel them from the country and “permanently pause migration” from some others – something that he’s centered as a major priority of his return to the Oval Office.
A series of announcements that followed from Trump on Truth Social appeared to mark a major policy shift for the country. Though it remains unclear exactly how he will carry them out in practice, the efforts stand in line with the president’s campaign trail promises to fundamentally reshape the US immigration system.
“This heinous atrocity reminds us that we have no greater national security priority than ensuring that we have full control over the people that enter and remain in our country. For the most part, we don’t want them,” the president said while addressing troops on Thanksgiving from Mar-a-Lago.
The suspect in Wednesday’s shooting, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, is an Afghan national who came to the US in 2021 under “Operation Allies Welcome,” the Biden-era program to resettle Afghans in the wake of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. He applied for asylum in 2024, which the Trump administration granted in April 2025.
Starting in 2011, Lakanwal worked with US forces, including the CIA. A senior US official told CNN the man had been vetted by intelligence agencies and was “clean on all checks” prior to working with US forces and being admitted into the country.
Lakanwal will face a murder charge in connection with the shooting.
Trump and his team believe they have a mandate to toughen immigration enforcement, with vows of deporting tens of millions of people central to his platform as he returned to the White House. That has included removal flights, Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in US cities including Chicago and Los Angeles and an executive order suspending the refugee program, though there has been frustration over lagging immigration arrests.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting near the White House, Trump began laying the groundwork to significantly bolster his anti-immigration agenda.
On Wednesday evening, he quickly cast blame on his predecessor for allowing the suspect into the country as he called for the reexamination of every person who entered the US from Afghanistan under the Biden administration. Trump has also expressed openness to deporting the suspect’s wife and children, telling reporters, “We’re looking at that right now – we’re looking at the whole situation with family.”
The president’s pledge only compounds efforts already underway from his administration. Earlier this week, CNN reported prior to the shooting that the administration was moving to reinterview certain refugees admitted to the US during the Biden administration as part of a comprehensive review of their cases.
By Thursday, US Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow announced that at Trump’s direction, he had ordered “a full scale, rigorous reexamination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern.” Asked for additional details, including which countries are considered to be “of concern,” USCIS pointed CNN to 19 countries listed in a June presidential proclamation, including Afghanistan, Iran and Venezuela.
Edlow also announced updated guidance that authorizes USCIS officers “to consider country-specific factors as significant negative factors when reviewing immigration requests.” That policy, USCIS said in a statement, will allow officers “to more meaningfully assess whether an alien is a threat to public safety and national security.”
Hours later, the president intensified his rhetoric, calling for what he described as “reverse migration.”
“I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries,” Trump said in a lengthy post to social media late Thursday evening, adding that he would “remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States.”
The State Department referred CNN to the White House on which countries would specifically be impacted. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump allies and aides commended the move.
“This will prove to be the president’s most politically popular policy, ever,” said Andrew Kolvet, spokesman for Turning Point USA, the group founded by slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk that caters to youth on American campuses.
Advocates, meanwhile, have warned that Trump’s rhetoric and actions could harm the Afghan community in the US.
Shawn VanDiver, the CEO of AfghanEvac, said that the suspect’s “isolated and violent act should not be used as an excuse to define or diminish an entire community.”
More than 190,000 Afghans have resettled in the United States since August 2021, according to the State Department.
Criticism of the administration’s efforts in the wake of the shooting that has claimed the life of at least one of the victims drew a strong response from Trump’s influential deputy chief of staff — and the top architect of his immigration policy.
In response to an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board arguing that Afghan refugees “shouldn’t be blamed for the violent act of one man,” Stephen Miller called the assertion “the great lie of mass migration,” while providing insight into how he views broadly views immigration.
“You are not just importing individuals. You are importing societies. No magic transformation occurs when failed states cross borders. At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands,” he argued.
On Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the department is moving to block undocumented immigrants from receiving federal tax-based benefits, acting on orders from the president to reserve the programs for US citizens only.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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CNN’s Kaanita Iyer, Alejandra Jaramillo, Priscilla Alvarez and Zachary Cohen contributed to this report.
