An Afghan national accused of shooting two National Guard members will be charged with first-degree murder, a US official said Friday, after one of the soldiers died from his wounds as Donald Trump promised to suspend migration from “third world countries.”
The announcement marks an escalation in the charges faced by the attacker, identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, who according to US media was part of “Zero Units”, an Afghan paramilitary force backed by the CIA.
“There will certainly be many more charges to come, but we are upgrading the initial charges of assault to first-degree murder,” said Jeanine Pirro, a Washington, D.C., attorney. fox news program ‘Fox & Friends’.
“It is a premeditated murder. There was an ambush with a firearm towards people who did not know what was coming.”
Pirro’s announcement comes after Attorney General Pam Bondi pledged Thursday to “seek the death penalty” against Lakanwal, describing him as a “monster.”
Pirro said Lakanwal opened fire with a Smith and Wesson .357 revolver at a group of guards patrolling just a few blocks from the White House on Wednesday, the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday.
Sarah Beckstrom, a 20-year-old member of the West Virginia National Guard deployed to the US capital as part of Trump’s crime crackdown, died from her injuries, the president said Thursday. He said the other soldier wounded in the attack, Andrew Wolfe, 24, was “fighting for his life.”
“We still have hope,” Pirro said of Wolfe. “He is still in critical condition. We are doing everything we can to help his family.”
The shooting has brought together three politically explosive issues: Trump’s controversial use of the military on American soil, immigration and the lingering legacy of the 20-year conflict in Afghanistan, America’s longest war.
‘Rigorous re-examination’
Late Thursday, Trump pledged on Truth Social to “permanently pause” migration from “all Third World countries” and threatened to reverse “millions” of admissions granted during the administration of his predecessor Joe Biden, in a new escalation of his anti-immigration stance.
When asked which specific nationalities would be affected, the US Department of Homeland Security noted AFP to a list of 19 countries, including Afghanistan, Cuba, Haiti, Iran and Myanmar, that face travel restrictions from the United States under an earlier order by Trump in June.
Separately, Joseph Edlow, Trump’s director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), said Thursday that he had ordered a “rigorous, large-scale reexamination of every Green Card for every foreign national from every country of concern.” When asked to specify the countries, USCIS referred AFP to the same list of 19 countries.
More than 1.6 million American green card holders, about 12 percent of the total permanent resident population, were born in the countries listed, according to the latest immigration data available on the agency’s ‘Eligible to Naturalize Dashboard’ analyzed by AFP.
Afghanistan, which has more than 116,000 green card holders, is also affected by the complete suspension of immigration application processing, ordered by the Trump administration after the shooting.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the suspect, Lakanwal, had been part of a CIA-backed “associated force” fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
He added that he had been brought to the United States as part of a program to evacuate Afghans who had worked with the agency after the Taliban overthrew the US-backed government in 2021.
Lakanwal had been living in western Washington state with his family and had driven across the country to the capital, authorities said.
The heads of the FBI, CIA and Department of Homeland Security and other senior Trump appointees insisted that Lakanwal had been granted unauthorized access to the United States due to lax asylum policies following the chaotic final US withdrawal from Afghanistan under former President Biden.
However, AfghanEvac, a group that helped resettle Afghans in the United States after the military withdrawal, said they had gone through “some of the most thorough security screenings” of any migrant.
