President Donald Trump is blaming the Biden administration for this week’s shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, DC, in half by insisting that the suspect, a 29-year-old Afghan, was amongst thousands and thousands of foreigners Biden allowed into the US with out correct vetting.
Details concerning the alleged shooter’s background, together with his earlier work for the CIA in Afghanistan, and conversations with sources conversant in the vetting process, paint a much more difficult image.
While investigators have but to determine a transparent motive for the shooting, the incident is prone to rekindle issues over the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the haste with which hundreds of evacuees had been delivered to the US.
Trump officers have instructed a breakdown in vetting is probably going tied to the assault, whereas the president is already utilizing it as a cause to further his crack down on immigrants in the US, together with reevaluating the inexperienced card standing of international nationals from a wide range of international locations.
In a video handle from his Mar-a-Lago membership in Florida late Wednesday, Trump argued the assault carried out by a lone gunman “underscores the single greatest national security threat facing our nation.”
“We must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here or add benefit to our country,” Trump stated.
The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was amongst greater than 190,000 Afghans admitted into the US following its withdrawal from Afghanistan, under applications designed to resettle those that helped the US throughout its 20-year warfare in the nation.
Over the course of greater than a decade, sources informed NCS, Lakanwal underwent quite a few rounds of vetting — beginning round 2011 by the CIA when he started working with the US army and intelligence businesses — and ending earlier this 12 months when he was accepted for everlasting asylum in the US by the Trump administration.
In 2021, Lakanwal was a part of a prioritized group evacuated from Kabul after the Afghan capital fell to the Taliban. Due to his work for the US, together with serving in an elite Afghan counterterrorism unit, Lakahwal was thought of to be vulnerable to retribution as soon as the Taliban took management of Afghanistan.
Once evacuated, Lakanwal went by way of what sources informed NCS had been a number of layers of vetting by a number of US authorities businesses — first in a Middle Eastern nation, in keeping with one supply conversant in the matter — after which frequently over the previous few years whereas he was residing in the US.
In April, Lakanwal, who lived in Washington state, was granted everlasting asylum by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is a part of the Department of Homeland Security.
In June, the Justice Department released the outcomes of an audit into the FBI’s function in facilitating screening Afghans delivered to the US after the 2021 withdrawal. The audit, carried out by the division’s Inspector General, discovered no systemic breakdowns in the multi-layered process, involving numerous federal businesses, that was established on the time to display and vet Afghan evacuees.
The report does acknowledge, nonetheless, that “the normal processes required to determine whether individuals posed a threat to national security and public safety were overtaken by the need to immediately evacuate and protect the lives of Afghans, increasing the potential that bad actors could try to exploit the expedited evacuation.”
Concerns concerning the thoroughness of vetting for individuals admitted into the US after the Afghanistan withdrawal have brought on angst in US safety businesses for years.
In 2023 and 2024, intelligence obtained from allies prompted the FBI to boost issues concerning the thoroughness of vetting for Afghan and Central Asian asylum seekers, present and former US officers stated.
Rampant use of fraudulent identification paperwork and using fixers with ties to terrorist teams had been a major concern.
The FBI despatched brokers to research the backgrounds of dozens of people that had been admitted to the US, and the reinvestigations prompted some removals, the officers stated.
Still, others disagree the vetting process is guilty for the shooting.
“We don’t think this is a vetting issue,” stated Shawn VanDiver, president of AfghanEvac, a non-profit group concerned in serving to resettle hundreds of Afghans after the US withdrawal in 2021.
Talking to NCS’s Becky Anderson Friday, VanDiver ticked by way of the in depth quantity of screening Afghans like Lackanwal went by way of — together with main as much as him attaining asylum this 12 months.
“People that came on the planes in August of 2021, they were vetted before they left. They were vetted when they went to a third country to continue their processing. They were vetted by [Customs and Border Patrol] and USCIS before they arrived here. While they were here, and awaiting adjustments of status, they were continuously vetted,” VanDiver stated.
“This is one man who, as the president said, ‘went cuckoo’ and took a deranged action that is not broadly indicative of the Afghan community at all,” VanDiver added.
A Trump administration official pushed again on the notion that there was any semblance of regular protocol in place throughout this time.
“The government was in shambles and in the process of being taken over by the Taliban. Our understanding, and what we’ve seen documented, is that there was very little vetting going on,” the official stated.
The first spherical of vetting that Lakanwal acquired round 2011 by the CIA centered on figuring out whether or not he may safely work with US intelligence and army personnel in Afghanistan, in keeping with a senior US official.
At the time, the CIA would have accomplished its personal vetting of Lakanwal by way of a wide range of databases, together with the National Counterterrorism Center database, to see if he had any identified ties to terrorist teams, the senior official stated.
Lakanwal was vetted once more a decade later by the NCTC throughout the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, earlier than he was allowed entry into the US.
“In terms of vetting, nothing came up,” the senior US official informed NCS, noting the evaluation didn’t present any ties to terror organizations. “He was clean on all checks.”
The senior official famous that the US authorities had been doing steady, annual vetting of people because the Afghans’ arrival in the US, particularly in the wake of the failed terror plot disrupted earlier than the election final 12 months in Oklahoma which concerned an Afghan evacuee.
Trump’s NCTC Director Joe Kent confirmed in a tweet Friday that Lakanwal was beforehand vetted by the US intelligence group whereas he was nonetheless abroad, however famous that screening was centered on his capability to serve alongside American forces in Afghanistan — not whether or not he was match to turn into a everlasting US resident.
“It is true that the terrorist who conducted the attack in D.C. was ‘vetted’ by the intelligence community, however he was only vetted to serve as a soldier to fight against the Taliban, AQ, & ISIS IN Afghanistan, he was NOT vetted for his suitability to come to America and live among us as a neighbor, integrate into our communities, or eventually become an American citizen,” Kent stated in the put up.
Kent additionally accused the Biden administration of utilizing that very same normal for permitting people entry into the US throughout the withdrawal from Afghanistan, “foregoing previous vetting standards applied to Special Immigrant Visas and any common sense vetting or concern for Americans.”
“As a result, over 85k Afghans—including individuals with backgrounds similar to this shooter— were rapidly admitted into our country without the rigorous vetting that has protected us in the past,” he claimed.
In 2021, the Biden administration was under immense stress from veterans teams to evacuate Afghans who had labored with American troopers, some taking it upon themselves to assist get individuals in a foreign country. The sense of urgency throughout that chaotic withdrawal raised bipartisan issues concerning the screening process for Afghans who had been in the end admitted into the US.
That was due in half to the sheer quantity of Afghans who had been coming to the US and the urgency of the evacuation itself, which got here because the US-backed authorities in Kabul was collapsing.
All of these components contributed to issues concerning the capability to precisely confirm the determine of these being let into the US and vet them accordingly.
That process is now under intense scrutiny as Trump requires a reexamination of each individual from Afghanistan who got here to the US under President Joe Biden, and criticizes what he says had been thousands and thousands of “unknown and unvetted foreigners” admitted to the nation under his predecessor.
On Thursday, the administration introduced it should reexamine all inexperienced playing cards issued to individuals from 19 international locations “of concern” at Trump’s path.
“At the direction of @POTUS, I have directed a full scale, rigorous reexamination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern,” Joe Edlow, the director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, wrote in a post on X Thursday.
Asked for added particulars, together with which international locations are thought of to be “of concern,” USCIS pointed NCS to 19 international locations listed in a June presidential proclamation.
The 19 international locations embody Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees USCIS, stated Thursday the administration can be reviewing all asylum circumstances that had been accepted under former President Joe Biden.
“Effective immediately, processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals is stopped indefinitely pending further review of security and vetting protocols,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated in a press release to NCS, including, “The Trump Administration is also reviewing all asylum cases approved under the Biden Administration.”