In the wake of a shooting of two National Guard members last week, the Trump administration has taken dramatic steps to make it more difficult for Afghans to obtain permanent resident status, instilling confusion and fear for refugees seeking entry into the United States, as well as those who’ve already surmounted the legal hurdles and now reside in the U.S.
The suspect in the shooting, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, is a 29-year-old Afghan man who arrived in the U.S. in 2021 through a Biden-era program that helped evacuate and resettle Afghans after U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan. The shooting resulted in the death of one National Guard member and the critical injury of another.
In the days that followed, President Donald Trump targeted Afghan immigrants, building upon months of efforts to limit immigration both from Afghanistan and in general. But making it more difficult for Afghans to enter into or stay in the U.S. could have devastating consequences for those in the midst of the application process—including those who’ve specifically fled their home country because their work with the U.S. military has put their lives at risk as the resurgent Taliban cements its control of the country.
“It’s really hard to overstate the tax of living in limbo while you’re waiting on a process that the government has simply stopped, really in an arbitrary manner,” said Laurie Ball Cooper, vice president of U.S. legal programs at the International Refugee Assistance Project. “They’re scapegoating an entire nationality for the tragic acts of one person.”
Since June, Afghans have been subject to a travel ban, with exceptions made for those applying for Special Immigrant Visas and close family members of citizens. But hours after the shooting, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that “processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals is stopped indefinitely.” As of November 27, the State Department has paused the issuance of all visas, including SIVs for Afghans who aided the U.S. during its two-decade-long war in Afghanistan.
Afghans outside of the U.S. who were in the middle of the interview and vetting process will now see that progress halted, and even those who have had their applications approved will not be issued a visa. This development came the month after Trump dramatically lowered the cap on the number of refugees admitted to the country, prioritizing white Afrikaners from South Africa.
“Afghans who haven’t yet obtained some kind of permanent resident status are facing a closed door, and it’s unclear how long that door will be closed and if it will open again,” said Julia Gelatt, assistant director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute.
Nearly 200,000 Afghans have been resettled in the U.S. since the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in 2021, under the Biden-era Operation Allies Welcome or Enduring Welcome. The majority of these were admitted through a process known as humanitarian parole, which does not offer a pathway to permanent residency. These parolees could apply for asylum or SIVs, but the system for processing these applications was significantly backlogged even before the pause in processing applications.
Not only are Afghans themselves confused about their legal status, the organizations that assist them as they navigate the process of resettling are working off of statements from administration officials without clear direction. “There’s so much uncertainty, and without any operational guidance, we as an organization are also feeling a little bit of a loss on how to educate the community,” said Kristyn Peck, the CEO of the Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area, which helps resettle refugees in and around Washington, D.C.
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the president and CEO of Global Refuge, a major refugee resettlement agency, noted that the Trump administration had been rolling back protections for Afghans for months. In January, the president signed an executive order suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, and later terminated agreements with resettlement agencies. Along with instituting the travel ban, the Trump administration also revoked Temporary Protected Status for thousands of Afghans earlier this year, which went into effect in July.
“For Afghan families in particular, there’s deep anxiety. There’s anxiety about their own predicament. There’s anxiety about loved ones still overseas, whose visas are now frozen, and about what it could mean if legal protections here become fragile or reversible,” said Vignarajah. Afghans who aided the U.S. military as interpreters or in other capacities may also feel a sense of “betrayal,” Vignarajah continued; despite their assistance, at risk to their own lives and those of their families, Afghan allies are being prevented from obtaining permanent residency in the United States.
“Refugees and other immigrants from many countries are asking the same painful question: ‘If I followed every rule, passed every check, and built a life here, can it still all be taken away?’” she said. “It’s just an incredibly difficult time for a vulnerable community that’s already had to deal with more than their fair share of demonization.”
There will be cascading effects for migrants from other countries, as well. USCIS will be reexamining green cards for immigrants from the 19 countries subject to the travel ban, and the Department of Homeland Security has announced a reevaluation of asylum cases approved during the Biden administration. On Tuesday, the Trump administration paused all immigration applications from those countries from which travel is restricted.
The Trump administration has contended that Lakanwal, who previously worked with a special paramilitary unit backed by the CIA in Afghanistan, did not receive sufficiently rigorous vetting, blaming the Biden administration for his entry. But reporting has shown that Lakanwal was vetted extensively both before working with the CIA and before arriving in the U.S. in 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome. He was also approved for asylum this year, which involves significant additional scrutiny.
After arriving in the U.S., Lakanwal struggled with mental health issues and with maintaining employment, with reporting by the Associated Press showing community concerns that he was alternating between “periods of dark isolation and reckless travel.”
“Unfortunately, vetting can only tell us what has happened in a person’s past, and it can’t predict what might happen in the future, and it often isn’t able to identify severe mental health issues,” said Gelatt.
Peck said that the purpose of resettlement is “creating conditions for our new neighbors to thrive.” Without access to programs that help refugees adjust to life in the U.S., both through assistance in finding employment and shelter and in helping to address mental health issues, Afghans will struggle to fully integrate into their communities—on top of the stress they now have about their ability to remain in the country.
“The lesson here is to invest in programs that support the health, the well-being, the economic stability of our new neighbors,” said Peck. “The work we do is about creating belonging and welcome, and I am concerned that the divisive and inhumane rhetoric is doing the very opposite of that, and is instead vilifying a whole community.”
Meanwhile, many Afghan refugees will be cut off from services that help keep them afloat. A law passed by Republicans in Congress over the summer revokes SNAP eligibility for certain legal immigrants, including refugees and asylum-seekers, effective in November. Another provision significantly restricts Medicaid, with lawfully present groups of immigrants set to lose access to that program in October 2026.
This may affect a significant percentage of Afghans in the U.S. According to a 2024 report by the Migration Policy Institute, 39 percent of Afghan immigrants were living in poverty, as compared to 14 percent of the overall foreign-born population. Afghan migrants are also less likely than the overall foreign-born population to speak English, which can hinder efforts to obtain a job or find a place to live.
But it’s uncertain how the current political atmosphere could affect the prospects of bipartisan legislation to provide Afghans who assisted the U.S. with a pathway to permanent legal residency. Senator Amy Klobuchar, who introduced the measure—which would also include additional vetting requirements—argued on CNN that the shooting highlights the importance of passing the bill.
“The across-the-board vetting—which involves in-person interviews, gold standard, using biometrics … when you do it with the entire group of people that came over, you can collect more information,” Klobuchar said. “That’s why I hope this will actually be an impetus to pass our bill and put the resources into it that we need to do the vetting across the board.”
The latest actions may face legal challenges, said Ball Cooper, but she argued that opposition from the public would also be necessary to build political pressure on the administration.
“It requires people in American communities standing up and saying, ‘Not in my name can you blame this entire nationality for the act of one person; not in my name and not on on my vote can you go forward and prohibit this entire class of people, based on no individualized determination whatsoever, from entering the United States, even though they stood by us and risked everything for us,’” Ball Cooper said.
