President Trump described the suspect who shot two National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C., as a “foreigner who entered our country from Afghanistan, a hellhole on earth.” He also said that Biden was “a disastrous president, the worst in the history of our country.”
Biden presided over the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, which resulted in the Taliban being gifted billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. weapons. Trump also blamed Biden for the “20 million unknown and unvetted foreigners” who entered the United States during the Biden administration years.
Two West Virginia National Guard members were shot in a targeted attack near the White House and remain in critical condition. The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was also shot and taken into custody. Authorities say he is an Afghan national who entered the United States in 2021 on a special visa for Afghans who assisted U.S. forces during the war. He later overstayed that visa and is now in the country illegally.
The FBI is investigating the shooting as a possible act of terrorism, though no motive has been identified. President Trump called the shooting an act of terror and said the attack represented a major national security concern. He also called for officials to re-examine Afghans who entered the United States during the Biden administration. USCIS later announced that immigration processing for Afghan nationals has been halted indefinitely pending a review of security vetting protocols.
An X account associated with the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF), the main armed opposition to the Taliban, issued a statement condemning the attack. The group wrote that it “strongly condemn[s] the horrific terrorist attack that occurred in front of the White House today,” and asserted that the suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, “appears to be directly connected to the Taliban and their broader milieu and base.”
The account added that the NRF has repeatedly warned, since 2021, that the Taliban have been sending individuals linked to their network and other extremist groups to Western countries with the intent to carry out attacks. It also claimed the Taliban distributed Afghan passports to thousands of foreign terrorist fighters.
The X post described the shooting as “only the tip of the iceberg” and said another pro-Taliban individual in the United States had been arrested earlier in the year. The NRF warned that as long as the Taliban remain in power, similar threats will increase, potentially on a far greater scale.
Under Operation Allies Welcome, the effort that resettled Afghans after the U.S. withdrawal, roughly 90,000 Afghan evacuees were admitted to the United States between 2021 and early 2022. Of those, about 73,500 were granted humanitarian parole rather than permanent status.
A 2023 analysis found that many evacuees remain in legal limbo because the system for processing asylum applications, Special Immigrant Visas, and status adjustments is heavily backlogged. Some never completed required paperwork, biometrics, or other follow-up steps.
A 2024 report by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General concluded that DHS “has a fragmented process for identifying and resolving derogatory information for Operation Allies Welcome parolees,” indicating serious gaps in vetting and post-admission oversight. A 2025 follow-up report found that DHS “needs to improve oversight of parole expiration for select humanitarian parole processes,” suggesting that many evacuees may not be reliably tracked once their parole ends.
According to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies, most Afghans evacuated to the United States after the 2021 withdrawal were not U.S. “allies” and were not admitted as refugees. The Center said more than 200,000 Afghan nationals arrived during the Biden administration and that only about 17,000 principal applicants received Special Immigrant Visas.
Roughly 28,000 Afghans were admitted as refugees between FY 2022 and early FY 2025. Of the 73,000 evacuees paroled into the country in 2021, fewer than 5,000 secured asylum or SIV status within eighteen months. The Center also said the administration expanded Afghan admissions through programs such as Enduring Welcome, new sponsorship pathways, and family-reunification options that allow parolees to bring in additional relatives as refugees.
Because of these problems in processing, vetting, and approving Afghan residency, the publicly available overstay-tracking reports have almost certainly undercounted the number of Afghans who have overstayed. The overstay reports for FY 2023 and FY 2024 from U.S. Customs and Border Protection cover only nonimmigrant arrivals, such as tourists, students, and business visitors, and do not include Afghan evacuees, SIV holders, or humanitarian-parole entrants.
Since Afghan parolees were admitted under a separate process, they are not counted in standard overstay data, which means any Afghan overstays or disappearances would not be reflected in the official reports.
Government audits show DHS still lacks a reliable system to monitor expiring parole or follow up with parolees after admission. As a result, the majority of Afghans admitted to the United States were never properly vetted, do not have permanent status, and the government has no clear mechanism to locate them, follow up on their status, or deport them. Even worse, many of them were able to bring their families into the country once they arrived.
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