1 of 2 National Guard members shot on duty in Washington, D.C., has died: Trump

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that a National Guard member had died after being shot in an ambush by an Afghan national near the White House, an attack that drew accusations from his administration of Biden-era immigration vetting failures and prompted a sweeping review of asylum cases.

Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died of her wounds and her fellow Guardsman Andrew Wolfe, 24, was "fighting for his life," Trump said, as investigators conducted what officials said was a terrorism investigation after Wednesday's shooting.

"Sarah Beckstrom of West Virginia, one of the guardsmen that we're talking about, highly respected, young, magnificent person ... She's just passed away. She's no longer with us," Trump said Thursday in his first live remarks since the shooting.

A picture of National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom. U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday that Beckstrom had died after being shot near the White House on Wednesday. (Nathan Howard/Reuters)

Federal and municipal officials earlier Thursday identified the two National Guard members shot mere blocks from the White House, and said multiple search warrants are being carried out to try to understand the movements and motivations of the suspect.

The two soldiers are part of a militarized law enforcement mission Trump ordered months ago.

"A lone gunman opened fire without provocation, ambush-style, armed with a 357 Smith and Wesson revolver," Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, told reporters at a morning news conference.

Pirro identified the victims as Beckstrom and Wolfe.

Displays are shown ahead of the news conference on Thursday. Shooting victims Andrew Wolfe and Sarah Beckstrom are shown on an easel to the left, with the suspect, identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, pictured on the right. (Nathan Howard/Reuters)

The two members of the West Virginia National Guard were on a "high-visibility patrol" outside the entrance to a subway station when the suspect confronted them, officials had previously said.

They had been sworn in for duty in D.C. less than 24 hours before they were shot, Pirro said.

"These young people should be at home in West Virginia with their families [for Thanksgiving]," said Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser.

Suspect drove across country

The suspect was wounded in an exchange of gunfire before he was arrested. Officials on Thursday appeared to indicate that it was another Guard member who wounded the suspect.

He was identified previously by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national whose last known residence is in Washington state.

Lakanwal is in hospital under "heavy guard," Pirro said, with the extent of his injuries not known.

WATCH | Witness describes initial confusion, surreal scene:Michael Ryan says multiple shots rang out nearby in Washington and then authorities pinned a person down before he saw two National Guard members on the ground.

A former landlord of Lakanwal's told The Associated Press he had settled in Bellingham, Wash., about 125 kilometres north of Seattle, with his wife and five children.

Pirro said the suspect drove across the country to D.C., though the timeline of his travels wasn't immediately clear.

FBI Director Kash Patel said that authorities were carrying out search warrants in Washington state and in San Diego, though the reasons for investigating in California were not immediately clear.

Patel said the FBI considered the case a terrorism investigation, even as Pirro said a motive had not yet been established.

Pirro said the intention is to charge the suspect with three counts of assault with intent to kill while armed, though specific charges could change depending on further investigation and the condition of the victims.

According to the DHS, Lakanwal, 29, entered the U.S. in 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden-era program to resettle thousands of Afghans who assisted the U.S. during the Afghanistan war and feared reprisals from Taliban forces who seized control of their homeland after the U.S. withdrawal.

A member of the Washington's Metro Transit Police Department patrols on Thursday near the subway entrance closest to where a shooting occured the previous afternoon. (Nathan Howard/Reuters)

The initiative brought roughly 76,000 people to the U.S., many of whom had worked alongside U.S. troops and diplomats as interpreters and translators. According to multiple U.S. media reports, citing sources granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the matter, Lakanwal was approved for asylum earlier this year.

Both Patel and CIA Director John Ratcliffe separately confirmed that Lakanwal spent time with a CIA unit while in Afghanistan.

The suspect worked with the U.S. government, including the CIA, "as a member of a partner force in Kandahar," Ratcliffe said in a statement.

Ratcliffe did not specify what work Lakanwal did, but said the relationship "ended shortly following the chaotic evacuation" of U.S. service members from Afghanistan in 2021.

Crackdown on Afghan refugees

Trump, who is at his Florida estate for the Thanksgiving holiday, said: "This heinous assault was an act of evil, an act of hatred and an act of terror."

"We must now re-examine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden," he added in a recorded statement.

DHS officials said Thursday that Trump has ordered a widespread review of asylum cases approved under Biden's administration and green cards issued to citizens of 19 countries.

A U.S. Capitol Park Police helicopter is seen on the National Mall transporting a shooting victim on Wednesday. (Emily Hanson/The Associated Press)

Late Wednesday, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said that it has stopped processing all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals indefinitely.

But it was not clear that any requests were seriously being considered for asylum, given a host of measures from the Trump administration this year to throttle immigration to the U.S.

Trump suspended refugee resettlement from the country on his first day in office, via executive order.

Just this week, it was learned that the Trump administration plans a review of all refugees admitted to the U.S. during the Biden administration, according to a memo obtained by both Reuters and the The Associated Press.

The memo — signed by the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Joseph Edlow, and dated Nov. 21 — said that during the Biden years, "expediency" and "quantity" were prioritized over "detailed screening and vetting."

The memo said that warranted a comprehensive review and "re-interview of all refugees admitted from Jan. 20, 2021, to Feb. 20, 2025."

Advocates say that refugees, who flee conflict or persecution in their home countries, are some of the most highly vetted individuals to be allowed entry into the United States. They must overcome a yearslong process that involves waiting, paperwork and vetting before they eventually qualify for the coveted slots in the refugee program.

That contention was also made in statement Thursday by the Afghan advocacy group #AfghanEvac, which expressed its condolences to the families of the two Guard members and urged political leaders and media figures not to demonize an entire community.

"AfghanEvac rejects any attempt to leverage this tragedy as a political ploy to isolate or harm Afghans who have resettled in the United States," Shaun VanDiver, president of the San Diego-based group, said in a statement. "Those who would twist this moment to attack Afghan families aren’t seeking safety or justice — they’re exploiting division and endangering all of us."

In addition to the refugee announcements, Afghanistan was among several countries whose citizens were to be banned from visiting the U.S., in an executive order signed in June.

Trump wrote at the time that Afghanistan "lacks a competent or co-operative central authority for issuing passports or civil documents and it does not have appropriate screening and vetting measures." He also cited its visa overstay rates from the country.

Additional Guard troops to be deployed

Trump in August ordered the National Guard deployment to fight crime in a city he said had become unsafe, despite objections from District of Columbia officials who challenged the move in court as an infringement on local government control.

Violent crime incidents had already started a decline last year after an increase in the first few years of the pandemic, city officials argued, and were far fewer than when a crack cocaine epidemic helped fuel a homicide total of between 360 to 480 killings per year between 1988 and 1996.

Evidence markers sit on the ground after two National Guard members were shot near the White House in Washington on Wednesday. (Nathan Howard/Reuters)

Trump, a Republican, has deployed troops elsewhere in the U.S., often without the approval of the governors of those states. National Guard troops can protect federal personnel and buildings but not perform most law enforcement duties.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth late Wednesday announced plans to deploy an additional 500 National Guard members to Washington in the wake of the shooting. It was not immediately clear if they would all be from D.C., which has about 2,400 Guard members in total.