President Trump issued a blunt warning after two West Virginia National Guardsmen were gunned down near the White House, calling the shooter a “foreigner who entered our country from Afghanistan, a hellhole on earth.”
He again reminded the nation that Joe Biden was “a disastrous president, the worst in the history of our country,” and directly responsible for flooding the United States with “20 million unknown and unvetted foreigners” during his years in office.
The shooting rocked the nation as the suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was revealed to be an Afghan national in the United States illegally, thanks to Biden’s chaotic and poorly vetted 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Lakanwal originally entered on a special visa tied to Afghans who claimed to have assisted U.S. forces, but he overstayed that visa and was never removed from the country. He opened fire in what authorities believe was a deliberate attack on uniformed service members guarding the nation’s capital.
He was shot and detained, while the two Guardsmen remain in critical condition.
The FBI is now probing the attack as a possible act of terrorism. President Trump called it exactly that, saying the incident was a direct result of Biden’s reckless policies and a growing national security threat. Shortly after Trump’s remarks, USCIS halted Afghan immigration processing indefinitely pending a full review of vetting failures.
An X account tied to the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, the leading armed opposition to the Taliban, condemned the attack and issued a chilling statement: Lakanwal “appears to be directly connected to the Taliban and their broader milieu and base.” The group warned for years that the Taliban were sending infiltrators into Western countries under the guise of Biden-era evacuation programs.
Their post described today’s shooting as “only the tip of the iceberg.”
The NRF also claimed that the Taliban issued Afghan passports to thousands of foreign terrorist fighters, enabling them to blend into Biden’s evacuation pipeline. They added that another pro-Taliban individual had already been arrested in the United States earlier this year.
The scale of Biden’s mismanagement becomes even clearer when reviewing Operation Allies Welcome, the rushed resettlement effort launched after the botched Afghanistan exit. Between 2021 and early 2022, roughly 90,000 Afghans were brought into the United States. Of those, a staggering majority—around 73,500—were granted humanitarian parole rather than permanent, vetted status. Many simply never completed required background checks, biometrics, or follow-up steps.
A 2024 DHS Inspector General report confirmed what conservatives warned from day one: the Department had “a fragmented process” for identifying threats among Afghan parolees. A 2025 follow-up found DHS still unable to track parole expirations or enforce compliance, meaning thousands of Afghan entrants simply blended into American cities with little to no oversight.
The Center for Immigration Studies later revealed that most Afghan evacuees were not U.S. allies and were not admitted as refugees.
They estimate that more than 200,000 Afghan nationals arrived during the Biden years, while only about 17,000 principal applicants actually qualified for Special Immigrant Visas.
Of the 73,000 Afghans paroled into the U.S. in 2021, fewer than 5,000 managed to secure asylum or SIV status within 18 months.
Meanwhile, Biden expanded even more pathways under programs like Enduring Welcome, allowing parolees to bring in relatives—again with minimal vetting.
The official government overstay reports, which track nonimmigrant visa violators, don’t even include Afghan evacuees, parolees, or SIV holders. In other words, any Afghan overstays were never counted, giving the public a false sense of security.
Government audits now confirm the worst: DHS still has no reliable system to track who overstayed, who disappeared, or who may pose a threat.
The bulk of Afghan entrants were never properly vetted, many never obtained any permanent legal status, and countless others quietly brought their families into the country.
