WASHINGTON — Two West Virginia National Guard soldiers were critically wounded in what officials said was a targeted ambush just steps from the White House, and a 29-year-old Afghan national was shot and taken into custody after he opened fire on their patrol Wednesday afternoon, according to Pentagon records. The National Guard shooting occurred near the Farragut West Metro station as the troops conducted a high-visibility patrol ordered under President Donald Trump’s crime emergency in the nation’s capital, initiating an inquiry into terrorism and nationwide hold on Afghan immigration processing.
The suspected gunman was identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, an Afghan national who entered the United States in 2021 through the evacuation program that President Biden initiated, known as Operation Allies Welcome and had since been granted asylum after moving to Washington state, according to Department of Homeland Security officials. Members of the F.B.I.’s joint terrorism task force are now combing Mr Simon’s background and online activity, but they have not publicly described a motive or any connections to organised extremist groups.
The soldiers, who were serving in Washington under Trump’s federal crime crackdown before being cast out to man the capital militarily, were on a “high-visibility patrol” outside the Farragut West station near Farragut Square when a shooter appeared from around the corner and opened fire at about 2:15 p.m., officials said. Media reports say troops opened fire moments later, wounding the suspect and leaving lunchtime gatherings of hundreds at sprawling Fort Hood fleeing for cover while nearby teams of medics treated some of the most critically wounded before tending to their buddies.
There was a brief lockdown of the White House complex by Secret Service agents, and officers were sweeping the downtown area, closing streets and Metro entrances around the scene. The Federal Aviation Administration also briefly paused flights into Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to make way for law enforcement aircraft, further disrupting pre-Thanksgiving travel before returning to normal operations.
National Guard shooting leads to broad Afghan immigration freeze.
Hours after the National Guard shooting, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said that it had “paused its processing of all immigration requests for Afghan nationals” indefinitely while it re-evaluates security and vetting procedures — a move essentially halting new or active Afghan cases across the agency. “Protecting the homeland, our citizens and the American people is the F.B.I.’s number one priority,” said a spokesman in a statement issued late Tuesday and quoted in a Reuters dispatch.
In a prerecorded video address, Trump condemned the attack as an “act of terror” and insisted that loose migration policies were the nation’s most pressing security challenge, arguing he would now “vet” every Afghan who entered on Biden’s watch. As AP News reported, the Biden-era Operation Allies Welcome resulted in about 76,000 Afghans coming to the United States, and a large portion of them are still waiting for permanent legal status.
Supporters of Afghan evacuees cautioned that the broad pause on processing runs the risk of penalising tens of thousands who adhered to U.S. protocols for fleeing Taliban reprisals following the airlift from Kabul. A previous Reuters investigation had reported that as many as 200,000 vulnerable Afghans may have no clear route to the United States if the scale of resettlement operations is curtailed, and the fresh suspension will fuel fears over an already crisis situation.
Afghan evacuee security vetting had already come under scrutiny.
Government watchdogs and lawmakers had raised questions about how the United States checked Afghan evacuees arriving in 2021 long before the shooting by a member of the National Guard in downtown Washington last month. A 2022 Reuters report discussed the Biden administration on pace to evacuate tens of thousands and an increasing pressure to hasten the evacuations while officials conceded that a “higher tolerance of risk” would be needed in vetting, as yet another CBS News account, a D.H.S. inspector general review on said officials initially did not have what the watchdog called “critical data” to thoroughly vet some evacuees.
Those findings stoked Republican assertions that the Biden administration took shortcuts on security, even as veterans groups and resettlement organisations urged faster processing so Afghans facing Taliban dangers would not be left hanging overseas. Now advocates fear that Trump’s far-reaching freeze may reignite those fights in Congress over dormant bills like the proposed Afghan Adjustment Act, even as families who put themselves on the line for American forces remain uncertain about when, if at all, their cases will be resolved.
Deployed troops ensnared in Washington crime, immigration crossfire
The two soldiers who were injured are members of a multi-state National Guard deployment that Trump authorised in August when he declared a “crime emergency” for the District of Columbia and temporarily took control of the city’s police department, an action that city officials have challenged in court as illegal. Some 2,200 Guard troops had already been patrolling D.C. streets before the incident, and U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said another 500 are now heading in to respond to the shooting.
Advocates and officials have warned residents not to take out their anxiety on Afghan communities or other immigrants as the terrorism investigation plays itself out. But the National Guard shooting has already sent ripples far outside of a cordoned-off downtown square, connecting wounded soldiers on patrol to anxious Afghan families overseas and reigniting an ugly national fight over immigration, security and America’s responsibilities to its wartime allies.
