U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to “permanently pause migration” from poorer nations in a blistering late-night, anti-immigrant screed posted to social media.
The extended rant came in the wake of the shooting of two National Guard members who were deployed to patrol Washington, D.C., under Trump’s orders on Wednesday.
A 29-year-old Afghan national who worked with the CIA during the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan is facing charges for the shooting, which will likely be upgraded after the death of 20-year-old Specialist Sarah Beckstrom of the West Virginia National Guard.
West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrissey paid tribute to Beckstrom.
“Sarah served with courage, extraordinary resolve, and an unwavering sense of duty to her state and to her nation,” said Morrissey. “She answered the call to serve, stepped forward willingly, and carried out her mission with the strength and character that define the very best of the West Virginia National Guard.”
The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, is accused of driving across the country to Washington in what officials described as an “ambush.” Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, remains in critical condition with unspecified injuries from the attack.
The suspect, currently in custody, was also shot and had wounds that were not believed to be life-threatening. He emigrated as part of a program to resettle those who had helped American troops after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Refugee groups fear backlash
Hours before Trump took to social media, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Joseph Edlow, said the agency would take additional steps to screen people from 19 “high-risk” countries “to the maximum degree possible.”
Edlow didn’t name the countries. But in June, the administration banned travel to the U.S. by citizens of 12 countries and restricted access from seven others, citing national security concerns. Afghanistan was among those countries.
Trump, who began his social media post by extending Thanksgiving greetings to “all of our Great American Citizens and Patriots,” said that even as the U.S. has “progressed technologically, Immigration Policy has eroded those gains and living conditions for many,” detailing a list of claims about the effects of migration on employment and crime that have long been disputed.
“Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation,” Trump said.
Trump cited the example of Somalians who have settled in Minnesota, seizing on a case of alleged COVID-19 fraud involving a Somalian-American group. In the process, the president used a slur for mentally disabled people to describe Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz.
Earlier Thursday, Trump met with reporters at his Florida estate. Asked by a reporter on Thursday if he blamed the shootings on all Afghans who came to the U.S., Trump said: “No, but we’ve had a lot of problems with Afghans,” without elaborating.
It was not not clear what mechanisms the White House might employ to fulfil Trump’s stated objectives concerning clamping down on migration to the U.S.
Even before Trump’s social media posts, groups that work with refugees worried about a backlash from the shooting incident.
“Regardless of the alleged perpetrator’s nationality, religion or specific legal status … we urge our country to recognize these evil actions as those of one person, not to unfairly judge others who happen to share those same characteristics,” Matthew Soerens, a vice-president with World Relief, a Christian humanitarian organization that helps settle refugees, told The Associated Press.
Ashraf Haidari, founder and president of Displaced International, which provides resources, advocacy and support to displaced people worldwide, told The Associated Press, “even as we pursue accountability, one individual’s alleged actions cannot be allowed to define, burden, or endanger entire communities who had no part in this tragedy.”
Ratcheting up anti-migration policies
In his second presidential term, Trump’s raids and deportations have disrupted communities across the U.S. The administration promised to focus on those with criminal records and those accused of violence, but many law-abiding residents and even U.S. citizens have occasionally been confronted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Control (CBP).
Several judges have assailed the administration for not appearing to afford due process to those facing deportation. Some who had never been convicted of a crime in the U.S. were deported straight to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is supposed to be targeting criminal illegal immigrants, but more American citizens and legal immigrants are being rounded up. For The National, CBC’s Terence McKenna talks to people who have been dragged away by ICE agents and asks: Is America becoming a police state?
In August, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security urged Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients to leave, saying these U.S. residents who arrived from foreign countries as children don’t enjoy “any form of legal status in this country.”
The DHS spokesperson used the term “self-deport,” a term connected to a fraught history.
On the campaign trail that capped his remarkable political comeback, Trump said migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Both Trump and Republicans have assailed what they say were lax border policies of Joe Biden’s administration, as the U.S. saw an increase in border encounters between 2021 and mid-2024.
But the picture is more complex than the Republicans portray, think-tanks including the libertarian Cato Institute say.
The Biden administration encouraged more asylum claims from outside the country and developed an app for migrants that has been discontinued.
The Biden administration also moved to end Title 42 — a pandemic health measure that had the unintended consequence of encouraging some migrants to make repeat attempts to cross — but the end of the measure did not occur until mid-2023, a year later than planned, as over 20 attorney generals from Republican-led states challenged the move.
Trump’s first term as president included several divisive and controversial incidents on the immigration file. That Trump administration in its first week spurred chaos at the nation’s airports by announcing a travel ban from Muslim-majority countries, which was met with successful legal challenges until the White House revised the order.
In a departure from precedent, the first Trump administration separated many migrant children from their families arriving at southern border points, and failed to properly track the whereabouts of hundreds of children. That failure, a report later found, was an inevitable outcome of the relevant federal government agencies using different computer systems.
Trump in 2019 also lashed out at four Democratic members of Congress, all women, saying they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” Three of the four women were born in the U.S. and the other, Somalian-American Ilhan Omar, became a naturalized citizen while a teenager in 2000.
On Friday, UN agencies appealed to Washington to continue allowing asylum seekers access to the country.
In response to a reporter’s question about Trump’s remarks, United Nations human rights office spokesperson Jeremy Laurence told a Geneva media briefing, “They are entitled to protection under international law and should be given due process.”
