U.S. suspends all asylum-seeking decisions following National Guard shooting

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Joseph Edlow said the Trump administration was suspending all asylum decisions following the shooting of two National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C.

In a post to

The announcement comes hours after US President Donald Trump pledged to ‘permanently halt’ immigration to the US from all ‘Third World countries’.

On Thursday, President Trump announced that a U.S. National Guard member had died from his injuries following Wednesday’s shooting that was blamed on the Afghan people.

According to a report by the BBC’s US partner CBS News, USCIS employees, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, have been told not to approve, deny or terminate asylum applications from any nationality.

The guidelines seen by CBS state officers can continue working on asylum applications and review cases until a decision is made.

“When you reach a decision item, stop and wait,” the instructions said.

There are still few details about Friday’s directive and Trump’s previous remarks.

President Trump did not say which countries would be affected by his plan. The move could face legal challenges and has already sparked backlash from UN agencies.

Both announcements follow Wednesday’s deadly attack and signal a further hardening of the Trump administration’s stance on immigrants during his second term as president.

Among other things, Trump has sought to enact mass deportations of immigrants who entered the country illegally, drastically reduce the number of annual refugee admissions, and end automatic citizenship that currently applies to almost everyone born on U.S. soil.

After Wednesday’s shooting, Trump pledged to expel foreigners from the United States “from every country that does not belong here.” The same day, the United States suspended processing all immigration requests from Afghanistan, saying the decision was made while reviewing “security and vetting protocols.”

Then on Thursday, USCIS said it would reevaluate green cards issued to individuals who immigrated to the United States from 19 countries. The agency did not explicitly comment on Wednesday’s attack.

When the BBC asked which countries were on the list, USCIS pointed to a June proclamation from the White House that included Afghanistan, Cuba, Haiti, Iran, Somalia and Venezuela. There were no details on how the re-examination would proceed.

In a two-part post Thursday night, Trump went further and pledged to “end all federal benefits and subsidies to non-citizens.”

The US president wrote in Truth Social that this would “allow the American system to fully recover” from policies that eroded the “gains and living conditions” of many Americans.

In the post, the president also blamed refugees for causing “social dysfunction in America” ​​and pledged to deport “non-net worth” people to the United States.

“Hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees have completely taken over the once great state of Minnesota,” he said, taking particular aim at the state’s Democratic lawmakers.

“I will permanently halt immigration from all Third World countries so that the American system can be fully restored,” Trump wrote.

The expression “Third World” is a term used in the past to describe poorer developing countries.

The president had already imposed a travel ban earlier this year on citizens of Afghanistan and 11 other countries, mainly in Africa and Asia. Another travel ban targeting majority-Muslim countries was enacted during his first term.

In response to Trump’s comments, the United Nations urged the administration to adhere to international agreements on asylum seekers.

“We expect all countries, including the United States, to honor their commitments under the 1953 Refugee Convention,” the UN Secretary-General’s deputy spokesperson told Reuters.

Jeremy McKinney, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, argued that Trump’s response was to scapegoat immigrants in the United States.

Speaking on the BBC World Service’s Newsday program ahead of Trump’s latest comments, McKinney stressed that the attacker’s motivation was unknown.

“These types of problems don’t know skin color or nationality,” he said. “If a person is radicalized or suffering from any kind of mental illness, that person’s background could be anything.”

The announcement comes after officials said Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the suspect in the Washington D.C. shootings, came to the United States in 2021.

He traveled under a program that provides special immigration protections to Afghans who have worked with U.S. troops since the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan.

Mr. Lakanwal previously worked with the CIA, the agency’s current director said.

Lakanwal would have been vetted by the United States when he began working with the CIA and when he ultimately traveled to the United States, according to a senior U.S. official who spoke to CNN.

A childhood friend told the New York Times that Mr. Lakanwal suffered mental health problems after working in his department.

Lakanwal later applied for asylum in 2024. His application was reportedly approved earlier this year, after Trump took office.

However, his green card request, along with his asylum grant, is pending, a Department of Homeland Security official told CBS.

The suspect was arrested after the attack and is said to not be cooperating with authorities. President Trump described this incident as an ‘act of terrorism.’

He said one of the two National Guardsmen shot died the next day.

Sarah Beckstrom, 20, from West Virginia, was working in the city as part of President Trump’s National Guard deployment to crack down on crime.

She volunteered to work in D.C. during the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, Attorney General Pam Bondi said.

A second National Guard member, Andrew Wolf, 24, said Trump was “fighting for his life.”

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