The man suspected of gunning down two National Guard soldiers near the White House on Wednesday was an immigrant from Afghanistan who came to the U.S. during President Biden’s 2021 airlift, President Trump said.
Mr. Trump called them and millions of other migrants let in during the Biden administration “the single greatest national security threat facing our nation.”
He vowed to re-vet every Afghan admitted over the last four years, as well as search for other foreign threats within the immigrant population.
“No country can tolerate such a risk to our very survival,” the president said in a video address Wednesday night.
He didn’t name the suspect but CBS identified him as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the suspect entered the U.S. on Sept. 8, 2021, as part of “Operation Allies Welcome.”
That was the Biden administration’s hastily formed plan to bring Afghans who assisted the U.S. war effort to America.
Ms. Noem said she wouldn’t name the man because “he should be starved of the glory he so desperately wants.”
Mr. Trump said the man then had his legal status extended by “legislation signed by President Biden.”
CNN reported Wednesday that the man applied for asylum last year and was approved this year.
The two soldiers were in Washington as part of Mr. Trump’s deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops. They are members of the West Virginia National Guard.
Authorities say the gunman opened fire without warning. The two soldiers were critically wounded.
Mr. Trump said Wednesday the threat from immigrants runs deeper than Afghans.
He pointed to a recent report in City Journal that Somali immigrants in Minnesota are defrauding government benefit programs then sending the money to al-Shabaab, an Islamist terror organization in Somalia.
“We’re not going to put up with these kind of assaults on law and order by people who shouldn’t even be in our country.”
He said the U.S. will re-check Afghans but also look at “any alien from any country who does not belong here or add benefit to our country.”
“If they can’t love our country we don’t want them,” Mr. Trump said.
The Afghan airlift was controversial from the start.
It was necessitated by the troop withdrawal Mr. Trump set in motion and Mr. Biden carried out in 2021.
The Taliban quickly moved to retake control of the country, sending the Biden administration scrambling to try to bring out Afghans whom the U.S. had promised to protect for their assistance in the 20-year war.
Roughly 77,000 Afghans were flown out in July and August of 2021, and another 4,000 came in the 12 months after that.
Experts said more than half of them lacked links to the war effort and were instead Kabul residents who were able to get through Taliban checkpoints to reach the airport.
Vetting was difficult, and even when the U.S. had derogatory information in databases, it wasn’t always checking before letting the Afghans reach the U.S.
Wednesday’s suspect isn’t the first Afghan airlift participant to spark concern.
Nasir Tawhedi, who also came in the 2021 airlift, has pleaded guilty to a role in a plot to carry out an Election Day shooting attack last year. Authorities disrupted the plan before the attack could be carried out.
The Washington Times has reported on vetting difficulties, including even obtaining basic information on those brought in.
A startling number of Afghan evacuees were assigned birthdates of Jan. 1 in U.S. records because they claimed not to know their birthdates.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/aug/30/feds-cant-say-what-happened-afghan-evacuees-us-who/
An unusual number also gave their birthdates as Sept. 11 — the date of the 2001 terrorist attacks that left nearly 3,000 Americans dead and sparked the 20-year war when the U.S. went after chief plotter Osama bin Laden, who was being sheltered by the Taliban.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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