Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed Sunday that the suspect in the shooting of two National Guard members near the White House last week was “radicalized since he’s been here in this country” after arriving in Sept. 2021 from Afghanistan.
Officials have said the suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national, entered the U.S. as part of Operation Allies Welcome after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Lakanwal was granted asylum by the Trump administration earlier this year. The CIA said Thursday that Lakanwal previously worked with the U.S. government, including the CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar that ended in 2021 following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Since Wednesday’s shooting, the Trump administration has ordered all asylum applications paused, according to an internal directive obtained by CBS News and two sources familiar with the order.
“We do believe it was through connections in his home community and state, and we’re going to continue to talk to those who interacted with him,” Noem said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” She provided no further details.
On Wednesday, a gunman opened fire near the White House on National Guard members stationed in Washington. One of the victims, Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died Thursday, while the other, Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, remains hospitalized.
The suspect was shot by a National Guard member and is also hospitalized. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said he faces murder charges.
On ABC’s “This Week,” Noem suggested the suspect was not thoroughly vetted before he came to the U.S.
“What they did was check a few names and a few data points,” Noem alleged. “But what President Trump has put in place now for vetting is biometric information, checking social media platforms, communications, contacts, matching updates of service that was never done under Joe Biden. He didn’t do that. In fact, he brought people to this country and then just said, well, we’ll vet them later.”
The White House has blamed policies of former President Joe Biden’s administration for allowing Lakanwal to enter the U.S. Samantha Vinograd, a top counterterrorism official in the Obama administration and a current CBS News contributor, said Sunday on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that there are no indications the “horrific tragedy was a result of a vetting failure.”
“Let’s be clear on what the vetting system is and it isn’t,” Vinograd said. “The vetting system is a system in which an individual’s identifiers — their biographic information, iris scans, fingerprints, facial images — are run against data sets of information about individuals with ties to terrorism and criminal history. The vetting system is not predicative of whether an individual with no derogatory information is or is not going to become violent.”
Vinograd said every Afghan refugee underwent vetting overseas before being cleared to enter the U.S., and then they were vetted again by the Biden administration. The suspect in last week’s shooting also underwent the “most comprehensive vetting” under the Trump administration to receive asylum, Vinograd added.
Since the shooting, the White House has put in place a number of restrictive immigration policies. On Thursday, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director ordered, at Mr. Trump’s direction, a “full scale, rigorous reexamination” of green card cases involving nationals affected by a presidential proclamation that fully or partially suspended travel and immigration from 19 countries.
