National Guard members Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe (left) and Specialist Sarah Beckstrom (right), the two soldiers shot on November 26 in Washington, DC. Photo / US Attorney's Office / AFP
An Afghan citizen accused of shooting two National Guard members will be charged with first-degree murder, a US official has said, after one of the soldiers died of her wounds as President Donald Trump pledged to suspend migration from “third world countries”.
The announcement marks an escalation in charges facing the assailant, identified as 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who opened fire on the guardsmen just a few blocks from the White House on Wednesday, the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday.
“There are certainly many more charges to come, but we are upgrading the initial charges of assault to murder in the first degree,” Jeanine Pirro, the attorney for Washington DC, told the Fox News programme Fox & Friends.
“It is a premeditated murder. There was an ambush with a gun toward people who didn’t know what was coming.”
Pirro’s announcement comes after Attorney-General Pam Bondi pledged on Thursday to seek the death penalty against Lakanwal, describing him as a “monster”.
US media said Lakanwal was part of the “Zero Units” – a CIA-backed Afghan paramilitary force – and entered the United States as part of a resettlement programme following the American military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
Sarah Beckstrom, a 20-year-old West Virginia National Guard member deployed in the US capital as part of Trump’s crackdown on crime, died from her wounds, the President said on Thursday.
He said the other soldier wounded in the attack, 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe, was “fighting for his life”.
“We still have hope,” Pirro said of Wolfe.
“He’s still in critical condition. We are doing everything we can to assist his family.”
Lakanwal, who was also wounded and is in custody, was said to have opened fire with a .357 Smith and Wesson revolver.
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.
Late Thursday Trump pledged on Truth Social to “permanently pause” migration from “all Third World Countries” and threatened to reverse “millions” of admissions granted under his predecessor Joe Biden, in a new escalation in his anti-immigration stance.
When asked which specific nationalities would be affected, the US Department of Homeland Security pointed AFP to a list of 19 countries – including Afghanistan, Cuba, Haiti, Iran and Myanmar – facing US travel restrictions under an order from Trump in June.
Separately, Joseph Edlow, Trump’s director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), said on Thursday he had ordered a “full-scale, rigorous re-examination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern”.
When asked to specify the countries, the USCIS referred AFP to the same list of 19 nations.
More than 1.6 million US green card holders, roughly 12% 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 Naturalise Dashboard” analysed by AFP.
Afghans across the United States were feeling “great fear” as Trump escalates his anti-immigration rhetoric, said Shawn VanDiver, president of AfghanEvac, a group that helped resettle Afghans in the country after the military withdrawal.
“They’re worried that the president and his team are going to use this deranged man’s actions as a cudgel to kick them out of a place that they’ve spent their entire lives serving,” VanDiver told CNN.
“That’s an awful feeling.”
Afghanistan, which has over 116,000 green card holders, is also affected by a total halt of immigration application processing, ordered by the Trump administration after the recent shooting.
CIA director John Ratcliffe said Lakanwal had been part of a US “partner force” fighting the Taleban in Afghanistan.
He added that Lakanwal had been brought to the United States as part of a programme to evacuate Afghans allied with the agency after the Taleban toppled the American-backed government in 2021.
Lakanwal had been living in the western state of Washington with his family and drove across the country to the capital, officials said.
The heads of the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security and other senior Trump appointees all insisted that Lakanwal had been granted unvetted access to the US because of what they called lax asylum policies after the chaotic final US withdrawal from Afghanistan under former president Biden.
However, AfghanEvac, a group that helped resettle Afghans in the US after the military withdrawal, said they had undergone “some of the most extensive security vetting” of any migrants. It said Lakanwal applied for asylum under Biden but received it later, under Trump.
“This individual’s isolated and violent act should not be used as an excuse to define or diminish an entire community,” AfghanEvac wrote on the platform X, drawing a barrage of hateful comments.
- Agence France-Presse