President Donald Trump is ramping up his campaign to deport immigrants from the United States in the wake of the National Guard shooting in Washington, this time targeting the millions of legal immigrants already in the country.
Trump unleashed the latest threats to expand his war on immigration over Thanksgiving, saying he would “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries” following the shooting of two West Virginia guard members by an Afghan national who worked for the CIA in Afghanistan. Over the weekend, his administration moved to narrow several legal paths for migration.
On Friday, the government halted all asylum claims from migrants seeking refuge in the U.S. after the alleged attacker, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was granted asylum earlier this year by the Trump administration and allowed to enter the U.S by the Biden administration. The president said Sunday that the pause on asylum decisions could last “a long time.”
Trump administration officials plan to reexamine legal permanent residents from countries labeled “high-risk” because of national security concerns, and to review tens of thousands of refugees mostly admitted under the Biden administration. Among the 19 high-risk countries are Afghanistan, Somalia, Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Iran.
Asked aboard Air Force One on Sunday which countries he classified as “Third World,” he said “I don’t think” all of the countries labeled for concern fall under his definition of the term. “But in many cases, they are Third World,” he added.
“They’re not good countries. They’re very crime-ridden countries. They’re countries that don’t do a good job. They’re countries that don’t register from the standpoint of success, and we frankly, don’t need their people coming into our country telling us what to do,” Trump continued.
Under Trump, immigration officials have previously declared their plans to carry out the largest mass deportation effort in U.S. history with a stated focus on people who are in the U.S. illegally. Trump is now supercharging existing administration efforts to restrict legal immigration as lawful noncitizens face the possibility of revocations of their status. As of 2024, the U.S. was home to nearly 13 million lawful permanent residents, according to the Office of Homeland Security Statistics.
“What started out as campaign rhetoric about targeting people without legal status who committed violent crimes, which most Americans rightly support, has become the pursuit of mass deportation by any means necessary,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, who leads a refugee resettlement organization known as Global Refuge, told MS NOW.
Immigration is Trump’s signature political issue. He is undertaking the actions as his approval ratings have been declining even on this issue – with a recent Gallup poll showing erosion of 9 percentage points since February on immigration. Last week’s shooting near the White House, which killed 20-year-old Guard member Sarah Beckstrom, could revive support for him on the issue.
Referring to non-citizens who came to the U.S. under Biden, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan told Fox News, “I really, truly think that most of them are going to end up getting deported, because we’re not going to be able to properly vet them.”
It remains to be seen how the White House will carry out the flurry of recent directives, but top Trump officials argue that measures are necessary to root out individuals who could pose a public safety risk to the American public. The president has described “unvetted foreigners” as “the single greatest national security threat facing our nation.”
A senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told MS NOW that the suspect in custody for Wednesday’s shooting, 29-year-old Lakanwal, was vetted by the National Counterterrorism Center through a program, known as Operation Allies Welcome, for any ties to terrorism prior to being evacuated to the U.S. and receiving humanitarian parole in 2021. “He was clean on all checks,” the official said.
Lakanwal served for a decade alongside American forces fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan as a member of a special CIA unit, which required him to undergo repeated background checks.
The U.S. government also annually vetted Afghans who arrived via Operation Allies Welcome, according to the official. Vetting was heightened in the aftermath of an October 2024 arrest of two Afghan nationals, who also came to the U.S. after the withdrawal, on charges of plotting an Election Day terrorist attack in the name of ISIS.
Lakanwal received asylum in April under Trump, but the president blamed Biden-era policies for admitting him and some 90,000 Afghans who assisted the U.S. government and other groups in the effort to fight the Taliban.
An inspector general report published in June found that multiple national security agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security, vetted Afghans who came in through a pair of resettlement programs, including Operation Allies Welcome. While the report acknowledged some of the evacuees’ biographical information was “incomplete or inaccurate” during the initial vetting process, it concluded those lapses were “largely mitigated through subsequent efforts to re-vet the initial wave of evacuees.”
The agency issued new guidance Friday for officers to implement new country-specific criteria for the 19 so-called “countries of concern,” including an assessment of a nation’s ability to issue secure identity documents. Those new standards will be marked “as significant negative factors when reviewing immigration requests,” according to the agency.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Friday the administration is working to cut off the refunded portion of various tax credits to noncitizen immigrants, which could include the Earned Income, Additional Child and American Opportunity tax credits, as well as the Saver’s Match Credit.
Many of the administration’s recent immigration measures built off of previous actions taken prior to the shooting, including an effort to reevaluate an estimated 200,000 refugees admitted under Biden and to partially ban visas from the countries labeled high-risk in June.
A Department of Homeland Security memo obtained by MS Now, dated Nov. 21, showed that the Trump administration issued plans earlier this month to review and reinterview refugees admitted to the U.S. during the Biden administration. It also immediately suspended green card approvals, or applications adjusting status, for refugees who arrived during the same period.
“We must now reexamine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden, and 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,” President Trump said Wednesday night.
Laura Barrón-López and David Rohde contributed to this report.
Akayla Gardner is a White House correspondent for MS NOW.
Emily Hung is an associate White House producer for MS NOW.