US President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that his administration plans to keep a freeze on asylum decisions in place “for a long time,” following a deadly shooting near the White House involving an Afghan national.
Speaking to reporters, Trump said he had set “no time limit” on the suspension, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has linked to a group of 19 countries already subject to US travel restrictions. The pause was introduced after a November 26 incident in Washington, where two National Guard members were shot, leaving 20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom dead and another critically injured.
Trump used the tragedy to defend the administration’s position, saying: “We don’t want those people… many have been no good, and they shouldn’t be in our country.”
Authorities have charged 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national, with first-degree murder in connection with the shooting. Lakanwal previously served in a CIA-backed “partner force” fighting the Taliban, and later entered the United States under a resettlement program created after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
Although Lakanwal was granted asylum in April 2025 — during Trump’s current term — administration officials have attributed his presence in the country to what they describe as insufficient vetting carried out under former president Joe Biden during the 2021 Afghan evacuation.
In the aftermath of the shooting, Trump wrote that he intended to “permanently pause migration from all Third World countries to allow the US system to fully recover.”
When asked which nations could be affected by the extended measure, DHS referred to the existing list of 19 countries facing travel restrictions since June. The list includes Afghanistan, Cuba, Haiti, Iran, Myanmar, and several others.
The administration has not given a timeline for when asylum decisions might resume, indicating instead that the freeze is likely to remain until the White House completes what it calls a comprehensive review of admission and vetting procedures.
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