President Donald Trump has announced a plan to halt migration to the United States from what he termed “third world countries,” saying the measure is in response to the recent shooting that killed a member of the National Guard in Washington DC.
According to BBC News, Trump outlined the proposal in a Truth Social post, saying the pause would help the US “fully recover” from immigration policies he said had weakened living conditions for Americans. He did not clarify which countries would be included or explain how the halt would be implemented.
Announcement linked to DC shooting
Trump’s comments followed the shooting of two National Guard members on Wednesday. Officials identified the suspect as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who entered the US in 2021 through a programme for Afghans who had worked with American forces after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Authorities said he later gained asylum in 2024.
One of the victims, 20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom from West Virginia, died from her injuries. Trump confirmed her death and described the incident as an “act of terror.” Beckstrom had been deployed to Washington as part of a federal effort to address crime in the city and had volunteered to stay through the Thanksgiving holiday, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The second Guard member, 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe, remained in critical condition. Officials said Lakanwal was not co-operating with investigators after his arrest.
Federal agencies take additional actions
In the hours after the shooting, Trump said the US would remove any foreign national “from any country who does not belong here.” He also announced a pause on all immigration processing for Afghan nationals, with federal officials saying the suspension would continue during a review of “security and vetting protocols.”
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said Thursday it would re-assess green cards issued to migrants from 19 countries. While the agency did not cite the attack in its statement, it directed questions to a White House proclamation released in June that named Afghanistan, Cuba, Haiti, Iran, Somalia and Venezuela among the listed countries. USCIS did not offer details about the scope or method of the review.
Trump later added in a two-part post that he intended to “end all federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens.” In the same message, he linked refugees to “social dysfunction in America” and wrote that he planned to remove “anyone who is not a net asset.”
Different reactions to Trump’s position
Jeremy McKinney, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told BBC News that the administration’s response to the shooting amounted to “scapegoating” migrants. He said the motive behind the attack was still unknown.
“These types of issues – they don’t know skin colour, they don’t know nationality,” he said. “When a person becomes radicalised or is suffering some type of mental illness, that person can come from any background.”
The White House and USCIS have not issued further comment on Trump’s proposal. The president has previously enacted travel bans affecting nationals from Afghanistan and several other countries and introduced a separate ban on multiple majority-Muslim nations during his first term.
