Trump vows strict curbs on legal migration after White House shooting

Trump's administration remained largely silent on how any of those changes would be made, which countries would be targeted or how sweeping the actions could be

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By Catherine Lucey, Josh Wingrove and Jimmy Jenkins

 

President Donald Trump threatened a slew of aggressive actions to curtail legal migration to the US in response to one National Guard member dying after being ambushed near the White House, though the scope of those moves and what legal or congressional mechanisms he may pursue remain unclear. 

Trump, who has amplified his anti-immigration rhetoric in the wake of the shooting attack by an Afghan national, said late Thursday he would permanently pause migration from “all Third World Countries,” “terminate” what he called “illegal admissions” under former President Joe Biden and end federal benefits for non-citizens. The president also said he would deport foreign nationals deemed a security risk and “denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility.”

 

The comments signal a renewed effort to sharply curtail even legal migration to the US and scale up deportations of those already in the country. Trump’s administration, however, remained largely silent Friday on how any of those changes would be made, which countries would be targeted or how sweeping the actions could be — for instance, whether the president aims to deport significant numbers of people with legal status or even citizenship by denaturalizing them, as he put it. 

On Friday, US Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow said in a social media post that the US is halting all asylum decisions “until we can ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.”

 

The agency earlier announced it would review green cards of people from “countries of concern,” potentially widening efforts to remove legal permanent residents. Those countries are the 19 listed in a travel ban from earlier this year but whether the “third world” nations Trump cited match that list is not clear.

 

The travel ban imposed in June restricted travel by foreign nationals from 12 countries, mostly in the Middle East and Africa, from entering the US, citing the need to counter the threat of terrorist attacks and safeguard the public. Those countries include Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Another seven countries faced partial restrictions.

 

Afghan Vetting 

Federal authorities have identified the suspected shooter as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, an Afghan national who previously worked with US forces and the CIA before arriving in the US in 2021, intensifying scrutiny on the more than 190,000 Afghans admitted to the US since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. Most of those comprise people who assisted US forces during the war and their families.

 

Since the shooting, the president has claimed Afghan evacuees received no vetting, waving a photo of one departure flight while speaking to the press Thursday. He’s also said Lakanwal simply “went cuckoo” even as the investigation into the gunman’s motives continues.

 

While the Trump administration has cast blame on the Biden team, Lakanwal was granted asylum by the Trump administration, according to AfghanEvac, a nonprofit group, and would have undergone vetting, including for his work alongside US forces fighting the Taliban. Advocacy groups have called on Lakanwal to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and without his case negatively impacting other Afghans in the US. 

Even before this week’s shooting, the administration aggressively moved to slash legal migration or travel to the US, offering some insight into their priorities. Trump has dramatically lowered the refugee cap, ended temporary protected status for migrants from several countries, imposed a $100,000 application fee for H-1B visas used by high-skilled workers and revoked thousands of visas.

 

The administration is also planning to review the cases of all refugees resettled under Biden.

 

“If you’re not someone who loves this country, if you’re not any benefit to this country, then we’re going to send you out of this country,” top Trump adviser Stephen Miller said on Fox News Wednesday.

 

The June travel ban reinstated one of the most controversial measures from Trump’s first term, which went through numerous iterations and a protracted court fight before ultimately being upheld by the Supreme Court as “squarely within the scope of Presidential authority.”

 

Trump said the latest ban protects the nation from terrorist attacks and public safety threats. The administration has said the 12 countries on the new list facing full bans were chosen because they pose a “very high” terrorism or national security risk to the US and had deficient screening and vetting processes. The seven countries where travelers face a partial ban were chosen because they posed a “high” risk. 

 

Officials over the holiday weekend sought to quickly signal they were acting on Trump’s threats, adding to confusion over what new steps the administration was taking.

 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday said his department would issue regulations clarifying that refunds for certain income tax benefits were “no longer available to illegal and other non-qualified aliens,” a plan the agency already announced the prior week, before the shooting.

 

Court Fights 

Trump on Thursday night also called for “reverse migration,” but without detailing what that would entail.

 

Any new immigration moves by the president are likely to draw legal challenges.

 

The administration is already facing claims it is removing migrants in violation of court orders and other legal protections. Multiple lawsuits in federal court allege wrongful deportation, including a transgender woman sent to Mexico despite an immigration judge’s order blocking the move due to her risk of being tortured or killed, and the ongoing case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a migrant from El Salvador who sued to challenge his mistaken deportation to his home country.

 

The Justice Department has admitted authorities made mistakes in several deportation cases, which could hinder future removal attempts. A federal judge is pressing ahead with an inquiry into whether Trump administration officials willfully defied his orders to turn planes around that were en route to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

 

Many of the legal challenges to Trump immigration policies have been successful. An analysis from Noah Feldman of Just Security data on immigration cases found “44 involve executive actions that have been blocked by the courts; 92 have been temporarily blocked, and 29 have been blocked pending appeal.”