The Donald Trump administration has promptly announced its next steps following the senseless shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C. The sweeping changes to immigration policies will start with the reexamination of green card holders from the 19 predetermined “countries of concern.”
The suspect shooter believed to be behind this violence is Afghan-born Rahmanullah Lakanwal. Immediately, the administration renewed its strong stance against Joe Biden-era immigration policies. Moreover, reports from CNN reveal that Lakanwal got into the United States through Biden’s “Operation Allies Welcome,” created during the military withdrawal from Afghanistan that continues to be a growing stain of the Biden administration.
Trump was the first to release a statement through Truth Social that can only be read as divisive. In the post he took a swipe at Minnesota Governor Tim Walz among other Minnesota leaders. But perhaps more attention-grabbing was his announcement that he was planning a permanent pause of immigrants from third-world countries. The only issue with this directive was that “third world” is neither a legal nor technical term — so it was always going to take a lot of creative interpretation to make that happen.
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph B. Edlow took to X to announce that he has directed the reexamination of green cards held by individuals from “countries of concern.” According to a June presidential announcement, the 19 countries are: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.
At the direction of @POTUS, I have directed a full scale, rigorous reexamination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern.
— USCIS Director Joseph B. Edlow (@USCISJoe) November 27, 2025
The USCIS went ahead and gave further clarification about what exactly they’ll be looking for in the reexamination. This time the administration did give very specific information about their plans. Apparently, the administration will be looking for particular negative factors. By the Trump administration’s understanding, if certain systems in a country do not work, then they cannot in good conscience issue “secure identity documents.”
The ever-controversial DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin added that this latest tragedy will affect Afghani immigrants the most. McLaughlin told reporters, “Effective immediately, processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals is stopped indefinitely pending further review of security and vetting protocols.” She continued, “The Trump Administration is also reviewing all asylum cases approved under the Biden Administration.”
The debate over whether crimes should represent an entire subset of people or just the person at fault is one that wears on. It’s never clear who is on which side because when a crime is committed by a far-right extremist, they should be looked at as individuals and all their crimes should be treated on a case-by-case basis. But when it’s an immigrant, one person represents all of them.
The Trump administration’s request does look reasonable at first glance. You simply cannot trust official documents from nations where people can just bribe their way into getting them. But if it’s just a new tactic to intimidate minorities, it will only breed resentment — and that doesn’t ease any tension in the long run.
Published: Nov 28, 2025 03:28 pm