DC Guard shooting: US halts Afghan immigration
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Washington: The United States has indefinitely halted the processing of all immigration applications from Afghan nationals, in a move announced shortly after President Donald Trump blamed his predecessor Joe Biden’s refugee and immigration policies for enabling the Afghan suspect in the Washington DC National Guard shooting to remain in the country.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said that, with immediate effect, it was suspending work on every category of immigration request involving Afghan nationals. The agency stated that all such cases are on hold indefinitely while security and vetting protocols undergo further review, stressing that the safety of the US and its people is its overriding priority.
The decision comes in the wake of the downtown Washington shooting that left two National Guard personnel critically injured, an attack Trump has repeatedly described as an “act of terror”. In his latest remarks, Trump said the suspect is a foreign national from Afghanistan who was flown into the US in September 2021 under Biden-era evacuation flights, and that his legal status was later extended under legislation signed by Biden.
Trump argued that lenient rules under the previous administration allowed the attacker to extend his stay and vowed a sweeping reassessment of Afghan arrivals. He said every individual who entered the US from Afghanistan during Biden’s tenure would now be re-examined, and called for the removal of any foreign national “from any country” who, in his view, does not belong in the US or does not contribute positively to it.