{"id":409219,"date":"2025-11-27T21:50:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T21:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/409219\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T21:50:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T21:50:19","slug":"national-guard-shooting-brings-scrutiny-to-afghan-refugee-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/409219\/","title":{"rendered":"National Guard shooting brings scrutiny to Afghan refugee program"},"content":{"rendered":"

The man accused of shooting two National Guard members<\/a> in Washington is one of about 76,000 Afghans brought to the United States after the chaotic withdrawal of the U.S. from their country as the Taliban took over, authorities said.<\/p>\n

The program, called Operation Allies Welcome<\/a>, was created after the 2021 decision to leave Afghanistan following 20 years of American intervention and billions of dollars of aid.<\/p>\n

Democratic President Joe Biden, who oversaw the withdrawal started by his predecessor \u2014 Republican President Donald Trump \u2014 said the U.S. owed it to the interpreters and translators, the fighters and drivers and others who opposed the Taliban to give them a safe place outside of Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

But others \u2014 including Trump and many Republicans \u2014 said the refugees were not properly vetted in a resettlement process they said was as chaotic and poorly planned as leaving the country<\/a> to the Taliban.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis individual \u2014 and so many others \u2014 should have never been allowed to come here. Our citizens and servicemembers deserve far better than to endure the ongoing fallout from the Biden Administration\u2019s catastrophic failures,\u201d CIA Director John Ratcliffe said.<\/p>\n

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Accused shooter worked with CIA before coming to US as refugee<\/p>\n

The accused shooter, identified by law enforcement officials as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, worked with the CIA \u201cas a member of a partner force in Kandahar,\u201d Ratcliffe said in a statement Thursday. It didn\u2019t specify what Lakanwal did for America\u2019s spy agency.<\/p>\n

The Kandahar region<\/a> in southern Afghanistan was in the Taliban heartland of the country and saw fierce fighting between the Taliban and NATO forces after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 following the al-Qaida attacks on Sept. 11. The CIA relied on Afghan staff for translation, administrative and front-line fighting with their own paramilitary officers in the war.<\/p>\n

Little is known about Lakanwal\u2019s four years in the U.S. or why he drove across the country from his home in Bellingham, Washington, where a former landlord said he lived with his wife and five children.<\/p>\n

Lakanwal was granted asylum in April under the Trump administration, according to #AfghanEvac, a group of veterans and others working to get Afghans who helped the U.S. out of the country in exchange for their help.<\/p>\n

Like all asylum seekers, he would have had to undergo fingerprinting and iris scans, a full background check and interview and a risk assessment, the organization said.<\/p>\n

Operation Allies Welcome brought tens of thousands of Afghans to the US <\/p>\n

Groups that help resettle Afghans said the actions of one man shouldn\u2019t reflect negatively on the tens of thousands<\/a> who have gone through the various legal pathways to resettling in the U.S. and the others who find themselves in limbo after Trump suspended almost all resettlement programs for nations across the world when he took office in January.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want people to leverage this tragedy into a political ploy,\u201d said Shawn VanDiver, president of #AfghanEvac.<\/p>\n

After leaving Afghanistan, tens of thousands of those seeking resettlement ended up in sprawling air-conditioned tent villages<\/a> at military bases like Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in central New Jersey, Fort McCoy in Wisconsin or at Fort Bliss in Texas.<\/p>\n

After months of health screenings and background checks many were resettled in established Afghan communities in northern Virginia and the surrounding Washington area, as well as Northern California and Texas. States where between 1,000 and 3,000 have settled include Arizona, New York, Florida, Georgia, Colorado, Nebraska and Pennsylvania, according to State Department data.<\/p>\n

Trump stops aid for resettlement after taking office<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s executive order shortly after taking office in January suspending federal funding<\/a> for resettlement agencies made it tougher to help refugees with basic necessities like food and rent handcuffing the mostly religious groups that help them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Emergency<\/p>\n

Emergency personnel gather in a cordoned off area where National Guard soldiers were shot near the White House Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo\/Mark Schiefelbein)<\/p>\n

Emergency personnel gather in a cordoned off area where National Guard soldiers were shot near the White House Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo\/Mark Schiefelbein)<\/p>\n

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The president, who has described Afghanistan as \u201ca hellhole on earth,\u201d already planned to review every Afghan<\/a> who entered the country under Operation Allies Welcome and reiterated that goal after Wednesday\u2019s shooting.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they can\u2019t love our country, we don\u2019t want them,\u201d Trump said in a message released on social media, adding that the shooting was \u201ca crime against our entire nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump administration wants to shut the door to most refugees<\/p>\n

Trump also used his message to attack refugees from Somalia who have settled in Minnesota, saying they are \u201cripping apart that once-great state.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s part of this administration\u2019s goal both to deport people in the country illegally and close the country to most refugees. Trump said he wants to remove anyone \u201cwho does not belong here or does not add benefit to our country.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the Afghans who made it to the U.S. was Mohammad Saboor, a father of seven children, worked as an electrician and A\/C technician with international and U.S. forces for 17 years. He resettled earlier this year in California and told The Associated Press<\/a> he looked forward to sending his kids to school and giving back to the country that took his family in.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"National<\/p>\n

National Guard patrol on the National Mall near the U.S. Capitol, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo\/Rahmat Gul)<\/p>\n

National Guard patrol on the National Mall near the U.S. Capitol, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo\/Rahmat Gul)<\/p>\n

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\u201cI believe that now we can live in a 100% peaceful environment,\u201d Saboor said.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press journalists Eric Tucker and Martha Bellisle contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The man accused of shooting two National Guard members in Washington is one of about 76,000 Afghans brought…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":409220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[7574,3881,15533,12785,84,69,57,82,22940,181121,8132,192686,50,80,135566,3677,31132,22941,88929,61,67,132,68,2058,13642,51483],"class_list":{"0":"post-409219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-afghanistan","10":"tag-ap-top-news","11":"tag-cia","12":"tag-dc-wire","13":"tag-district-of-columbia","14":"tag-donald-trump","15":"tag-general-news","16":"tag-joe-biden","17":"tag-john-ratcliffe","18":"tag-local-news-for-apple","19":"tag-military-and-defense","20":"tag-mohammad-saboor","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-politics","23":"tag-shawn-vandiver","24":"tag-shootings","25":"tag-taliban","26":"tag-u-s-central-intelligence-agency","27":"tag-u-s-national-guard","28":"tag-u-s-news","29":"tag-united-states","30":"tag-unitedstates","31":"tag-us","32":"tag-washington","33":"tag-west-virginia","34":"tag-wv-state-wire"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115623876438362987","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}