Donald Trump has said he will “permanently pause migration from all third world countries,” a day after two national guard members were shot in Washington DC. The attack has rapidly become a political flashpoint in the president’s ongoing crackdown on immigration.
In a social media post, sent after 11pm on Thursday, the US president said his administration would also “end all federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens” and remove “anyone who is not a net asset to the United States.” The post, which began with “a very happy Thanksgiving,” marks a major escalation in the anti-migrant policies of his second term, which has been dominated by a campaign of mass deportations.
Earlier in the night, President Trump announced the death of Sarah Beckstrom, one of the two guard members shot in the attack close to the White House on Wednesday. The second guard member, Andrew Wolfe, 24, is still fighting for his life.
Authorities suspect the shooting was carried out by Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national.
Lakanwal entered the US in September 2021 under a Biden-era program that evacuated and resettled tens of thousands from Afghanistan following the chaotic US withdrawal. Reuters reported that he was granted asylum in April of this year, under the Trump administration, and the CIA confirmed on Thursday that he had worked with agency-backed military units during the US war in Afghanistan.
Lakanwal was injured in the attack and remains in custody.
The president’s late-night social media post did not identify the countries he intended to target or explain what he meant by the term “third-world.”
Instead, it used blistering anti-immigrant rhetoric to blame issues like high crime and America’s rising deficit on the presence of migrants and refugees, without providing evidence.
In his post, the president singled out Somali communities in Minnesota, following last week’s promise to end temporary protected status for people from Somalia in the state.
The post comes as the president and members of his administration have announced sweeping immigration reforms in the wake of the shooting.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has indefinitely suspended processing of immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals pending further review.
The Department of Homeland Security later announced the administration was expanding this to include a review of all asylum cases approved under the Biden administration. The department did not clarify if this review would be limited to Afghan cases or extended to other countries.
The USCIS director, Joseph Edlow, further stated he was directing a “full-scale, rigorous re-examination of every green card for every alien from every country of concern,” at President Trump’s request.
Edlow’s statement did not specify which countries were considered “of concern,” but USCIS pointed to a travel ban Trump previously imposed in June on citizens of 19 countries, including Afghanistan, Burundi, Laos, Togo, Venezuela, Sierra Leone, and Turkmenistan.
It is not clear how the president would enact such a “pause” in migration, given that previous bans issued by his administration have faced challenges in the courts and in Congress.
A 2017 travel ban during Trump’s first term was widely criticized and faced significant legal and popular resistance.
The shooting, Trump claimed earlier in the day, “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.”
National guard troops have been positioned across Washington DC since August, when the Trump administration declared a “crime emergency” and ordered them in to support federal and local law enforcement. Soon after Wednesday’s shooting, Trump said he would send 500 more national guard troops to the capital.
A federal judge last week had ordered an end to the national guard deployment but put her order on hold for 21 days to allow the administration time to either remove the troops or appeal the decision.
