Trump vows to clamp down on migration from developing nations after D.C. attack

U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to "permanently pause migration" from several countries, with his Department of Homeland Security prepared to carry out his policies.

The extended Trump rant on social media came just before midnight Thursday, the day after the shooting of two National Guard members who were deployed to patrol Washington, D.C., under Trump's orders on Wednesday.

A 29-year-old Afghan national who worked with the CIA during the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan is now expected to be charged with first-degree murder in the death of 20-year-old Specialist Sarah Beckstrom of the West Virginia National Guard.

West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey paid tribute to Beckstrom in a statement, saying she "served with courage, extraordinary resolve, and an unwavering sense of duty to her state and to her nation.

The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, is accused of driving across the country from Washington state and using a revolver in what officials described as an "ambush" near a D.C. subway station. Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, remains in critical condition with unspecified injuries from the attack.

The suspect, currently in custody, was also shot and had wounds that were not believed to be life-threatening. He immigrated to the U.S. in 2021 as part of a program to resettle those who had helped American troops after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

A couple looks at a makeshift memorial in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, at the scene of the shooting of two National Guard soldiers a day earlier. (Cliff Owen/The Associated Press)Refugee groups fear backlash

Trump, who began his social media post by extending Thanksgiving greetings to "all of our Great American Citizens and Patriots," said that even as the U.S. has "progressed technologically, Immigration Policy has eroded those gains and living conditions for many," detailing a list of claims about the effects of migration on employment and crime that have long been disputed.

"Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation," Trump said, calling for an end to migration from "all Third World Countries."

Trump cited the example of Somalis who have settled in Minnesota, seizing on a case of alleged COVID-19 fraud involving a Somali-American group. In the process, the president used a slur for mentally disabled people to describe Minnesota's governor, Tim Walz.

WATCH | Trump betraying Afghan war veterans, allies, says #AfghanEvac president:The suspect in the Washington, D.C., shooting that left a National Guard member dead has been identified as Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal. Shawn VanDiver, founder and president of #AfghanEvac, addresses U.S. President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration comments, which ramped up after Lakanwal was identified.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reposted Trump's messages, saying that "the fight for western civilization is just getting started." Subsequent DHS posts on social media platform X called on Americans to "help deport them" and "help arrest them," with a link to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recruitment page.

It wasn't clear what mechanisms the White House might employ to fulfil Trump's stated objectives concerning clamping down on migration to the U.S. Other measures concerning the asylum and immigration processes have met with legal challenges.

Earlier Thursday, Trump met with reporters at his Florida estate. Asked by a reporter on Thursday if he blamed the shootings on all Afghans who came to the U.S., Trump said: "No, but we've had a lot of problems with Afghans," without elaborating.

Even before Trump's social media posts, groups that work with refugees worried about a backlash from the shooting incident.

"Regardless of the alleged perpetrator’s nationality, religion or specific legal status ... 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," Matthew Soerens, a vice-president with World Relief, a Christian humanitarian organization that helps settle refugees, told The Associated Press.

The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial, wrote: "Collective punishment of all Afghans in the U.S. won't make America safer and it might embitter more [people] against the United States."

Hours before Trump took to social media, Joseph Edlow, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the agency would take additional steps to screen people from 19 "high-risk" countries "to the maximum degree possible."

Edlow didn't name the countries. But in June, the administration banned travel to the U.S. by citizens of 12 countries and restricted access from seven others, citing national security concerns. Afghanistan was among those countries.

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Ratcheting up anti-migration policies

In his second presidential term, Trump's raids and deportations have disrupted communities across the United States. The administration promised to focus on those with criminal records and those accused of violence, but many law-abiding residents and even U.S. citizens have occasionally been confronted by ICE and Customs and Border Protection officers.

Several judges have assailed the administration for not appearing to afford due process to those facing deportation. Some who had never been convicted of a crime in the U.S. were deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

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In August, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security urged Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients to leave, saying these U.S. residents who arrived from foreign countries as children don't enjoy "any form of legal status in this country."

The DHS spokesperson used the term "self-deport," a term connected to a fraught history.

The Trump administration also wants to end birthright citizenship. Courts have blocked that bid, but the matter could be brought before the U.S. Supreme Court.

On the campaign trail that capped his remarkable political comeback in the November 2024 election, Trump said migrants were "poisoning the blood of our country."

Both Trump and Republicans have criticized what they say were lax border policies of Joe Biden's administration, as the U.S. saw an increase in border encounters between 2021 and mid-2024.

But the picture is more complex than the Republicans portray, think-tanks, including the libertarian Cato Institute, say. The Biden administration encouraged more asylum claims from outside the country and developed an app for migrants that has been discontinued.

Biden's White House also moved to end Title 42 — a pandemic health measure that had the unintended consequence of encouraging some migrants to make repeated attempts to cross the border — but the end of the measure did not occur until mid-2023, a year later than planned, as more than 20 attorneys general from Republican-led states challenged the move.

Trump's first term as president included several divisive and controversial incidents on the immigration file. In its first week, that administration spurred chaos at the nation's airports by announcing a travel ban from Muslim-majority countries, but it was met with successful legal challenges until the White House revised the order.

In a departure from precedent, the first Trump administration separated many migrant children from their families arriving at southern border points and failed to properly track the whereabouts of hundreds of children. That failure, a report later found, was an inevitable outcome of the relevant federal government agencies using different computer systems.

Trump in 2019 also lashed out at four Democratic members of Congress, all women, saying they should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came." Three of the four women were born in the U.S., and the other, Somali-American Ilhan Omar, became a naturalized citizen while a teenager in 2000.

On Friday, United Nations agencies appealed to Washington to continue allowing asylum seekers access to the country.

In response to a reporter's question about Trump's remarks, UN human rights office spokesperson Jeremy Laurence told a Geneva media briefing, "They are entitled to protection under international law and should be given due process."