After an Afghan national was charged with killing a National Guard member and wounding another in Washington, D.C., Representative Jim Banks has called for a sweeping re‑vetting of Afghans admitted to the United States following the Taliban takeover. The attack has reignited partisan fights over immigration and security under the Biden and Trump administrations.
According to court filings and multiple news reports, the shooting took place on November 26, 2025, near the Farragut West Metro station in downtown Washington, D.C., close to the White House, where two West Virginia National Guard members were on patrol. The suspect, 29‑year‑old Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, is accused of opening fire in an ambush‑style attack that killed Specialist Sarah Beckstrom and critically injured Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe. Lakanwal was also shot and remains in custody, facing charges including first‑degree murder and assault with intent to kill while armed.
Outlets including The Washington Post, the Associated Press and Al Jazeera report that witnesses and officials say Lakanwal shouted "Allahu akbar" during the attack and attempted to reload before being subdued by other Guard members.(apnews.com) Beckstrom, 20, joined the West Virginia Army National Guard in 2023, while Wolfe, 24, has served with the West Virginia Air National Guard since 2019 and remains hospitalized.(washingtonpost.com)
Lakanwal has been identified by U.S. and Afghan officials as a former member of a CIA‑backed Afghan "Zero Unit" counterterrorism force, trained and supported by the United States before the 2021 collapse of the U.S.‑aligned government in Kabul.(en.wikipedia.org) Reporting by CNN, Reuters and other outlets has highlighted accounts from acquaintances who say he struggled with mental health issues and the aftermath of his combat experience after resettling in the United States.(en.wikipedia.org)
In an interview published by The Daily Wire, Rep. Jim Banks (R‑IN), a Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan, said he had long warned about the risks of insufficient screening of Afghan evacuees. "If you flood the country with unvetted Afghan nationals, we knew that there would be a large population within that group who were aligned with terrorists, and now this is playing out and proving to be true," Banks told the outlet.(cbsnews.com) His remarks reflect his assessment and are not supported by public evidence tying broader Afghan evacuee populations to terrorism.
Banks urged the federal government to conduct a new, case‑by‑case review of Afghans brought to the U.S. after the Taliban takeover. "Go back and vet all of them," he said, arguing that Congress should provide the president with funding and legal authority to carry out such a process. According to The Daily Wire, he added that evacuees who "weren’t properly vetted" should undergo additional screening and, if found ineligible, be removed from the country.
Drawing on his military service, Banks said he had served alongside Afghan translators and troops and insisted that not everyone who assisted U.S. forces should automatically be resettled. "They should be vetted. Just because they did something in Afghanistan during the war that aligned with America doesn’t mean that they support American values," he said, arguing that only migrants who "love America" should be admitted. Those comments echo long‑standing Republican arguments for tightening refugee and parole admissions, though they are statements of opinion rather than documented findings.
Public records and immigration officials state that Lakanwal entered the United States in September 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome, the Biden‑era humanitarian parole program for at‑risk Afghans, and later applied for asylum in 2024; his asylum was granted in 2025, and his application for a green card is pending.(en.wikipedia.org) Federal officials have said they are investigating the D.C. shooting as a possible act of terrorism, but have not publicly identified a definitive motive.(en.wikipedia.org)
The attack has become a flash point in a broader debate over immigration and border security. President Donald Trump, who returned to office in 2025, has blamed Biden‑era policies for allowing Lakanwal and other Afghan evacuees into the country and has vowed to impose far stricter vetting. Following the shooting, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued a December 2 memorandum pausing immigration processing for nationals of 19 "high‑risk" countries, many of them previously subject to travel bans, and ordering a comprehensive re‑review of cases involving people from those countries who entered the United States on or after January 20, 2021.(theguardian.com)
The memo says that, in light of national security concerns raised by the D.C. attack, officials will conduct additional interviews and security checks and compile within 90 days a list of individuals for potential enforcement action. Critics of the policy, including immigrant advocates and some legal analysts, argue that it sweeps in large numbers of lawful residents with no criminal history and risks politicizing the immigration system.(theguardian.com)
In public remarks following the policy shift, Trump has called for reexamining every Afghan who entered under Operation Allies Welcome and for removing any noncitizen who, in his view, "does not belong here or add benefit" to the United States. Those comments track with his campaign pledge to sharply curtail immigration from what he has termed "high‑risk" or "third world" countries.(theguardian.com)
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said publicly that Lakanwal was evacuated to the United States under the Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome program and later came under scrutiny after the D.C. shooting, but she has not presented evidence that he was radicalized inside the United States by specific local actors.(washingtonpost.com) Afghan officials, including Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, have sought to distance their government and people from the attack, saying Lakanwal acted independently and was brought to the U.S. under American programs.(reuters.com)
Banks has tied the episode to what he describes as systemic failings since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, when an ISIS‑K suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. service members at Kabul’s airport and the Taliban seized control of the country.(en.wikipedia.org) He argues that the political backlash to that withdrawal, combined with public concern over illegal border crossings and humanitarian parole programs, helped fuel support for Trump’s 2024 election victory and gave the administration a mandate to pursue sweeping immigration changes. That political analysis reflects Banks’s view; voter motivations in the election are the subject of ongoing debate among analysts.
Pew Research Center has estimated that there were roughly 10.5 to 11.7 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States in recent years, with modest fluctuations over the past decade.(theguardian.com) Those figures are not specific to Afghans, and experts note that Afghans admitted through Operation Allies Welcome generally entered through legal channels such as humanitarian parole and subsequent asylum, rather than as unauthorized immigrants.