U.S. protocols for admitting foreigners face growing scrutiny following the shooting of two National Guard soldiers in Washington, allegedly by an Afghan national, last week.
The question the Trump administration has been asked and declined to answer in the aftermath of the Nov. 26 attack is how alleged gunman Rahmanullah Lakanwal was able to obtain status as an asylum recipient earlier this year, and if he was vetted by the Department of Homeland Security.
Procedures listed on government websites state that asylum-seekers like Lakanwal would have been required to undergo extensive vetting and database checks, even after being present in the country for several years. However, neither of these measures is capable of keeping tabs on their behavior after being approved for asylum.
The National Immigration Center for Enforcement, an organization in Washington that advocates of immigration law enforcement, said the initial mistake was not in failing to vet him in 2021 or 2025, but in admitting Lakanwal in the first place without a sufficient way to track whether asylum recipients are radicalized afterward.
“Blaming ‘radicalization’ here after Biden let him in isn’t a defense, it’s the indictment. It proves we never should have opened the door in the first place,” NICE President RJ Hauman wrote in a text message Monday.
“Every single person imported from jihadist hotbeds carries ineradicable risk, especially Afghans, and yes, even the celebrated interpreters and ‘allies’ sold as risk-free moral repayment,” Hauman said. “Reality check: vetting was and still is impossible. Dozens of these evacuees have since been charged with terror plots, child rape, violent assaults, and murder on U.S. bases and in American communities.”
Lakanwal was one of more than 80,000 Afghans who hastily boarded U.S. planes and fled Kabul after former President Joe Biden ordered all U.S. assets to pull out of the country in August 2021. The Biden administration had promised to help evacuate U.S. citizens, green card holders, and Afghan Special Immigration Visa holders.
A 2021 Senate intelligence report, exclusively obtained by the Washington Examiner in late 2021, revealed that approximately 75% of evacuees flown out of Afghanistan did not fit into any of those categories.
Furthermore, the Biden administration failed to thoroughly vet the information provided by tens of thousands of Afghans — that is, federal employees merely screened, rather than thoroughly vetted, people brought to the U.S., the memo stated.
Lakanwal was allowed to remain in the United States following the 2021 withdrawal and would have had one year after arriving to apply for asylum, a legal protection granted to individuals who have proven they would face persecution if forced to return to their home country.
The suspected shooter worked with secret “Zero Units” in Afghanistan. This CIA-tangent operation meant that he would have carried out dangerous combat assignments going after the Taliban and would have been extensively vetted by the U.S.
The DHS and its agency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, did not respond to requests for comment as to the standards for vetting asylum-seekers. Whereas refugees are non-U.S. citizens who seek admission while still abroad, asylum-seekers are non-U.S. citizens who have been allowed to enter the country as a result of various circumstances, such as illegally crossing the border and being placed in immigration court proceedings or the Afghan withdrawal.
The USCIS website states that the government would collect fingerprints, photographs, and signatures for both groups. A USCIS officer would have sat down with Lakanwal to vet the information he claimed was true, as well as his claim of being persecuted if returned to Afghanistan.
Applicants’ statements and information are checked against various government agency databases: the National Counterterrorism Center’s available information, the State Department’s Consular Lookout and Support System, the Department of Defense’s biometric system, the FBI’s Next Generation Identification system, and the DHS’s IDENT database.
Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow on border security and immigration at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, said Lakanwal should have been run through the databases during the application process.
“Any ‘hit’ would for an individual would have to be cleared — meaning considered irrelevant, overcome by an adjudicator, or waived — before the benefit is granted,” Hankinson wrote in an email Monday.
The problem, Hankinson explained, was that someone from a country like Afghanistan would have been difficult to obtain information on, despite working with the U.S. military years earlier, specifically if that individual was now a threat.
“Most refugee-asylees are poorly vetted, in the sense that their basic identity — name, DOB, POB, family, jobs, friends, contacts, criminal history — are pretty much undiscoverable if they come from places like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia, or Venezuela where there are no accurate records or if there are, the government won’t share them,” said Hankinson. “Even the most vetted applicants can later radicalize or crack up.”
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said on Sunday that the Trump administration will begin reviewing “every single person” seeking asylum and added that the department already requires yearly check-ins for immigrants seeking asylum.
However, Noem declined NBC News “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker’s repeated questions about why Lakanwal had been allowed to proceed through the asylum’s vetting process if the Trump administration had, in fact, raised those standards earlier this year.
The Trump administration has directed USCIS to pause all asylum decisions.
Hauman, also a visiting fellow at Heritage, said the Trump administration should not improve vetting or prioritize annual check-ins, but reconsider the basis for admitting foreigners in the first place.
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“Trump never promised to accept imported threats and play eternal whack-a-mole with ‘better vetting,’ yearly check-ins, or special immigrant visas. He promised to shut the damn door on entire high-risk, low-benefit pipelines and keep the danger offshore,” Hauman said.
“Anything less than a policy that admits reliable vetting is impossible — however stringently attempted — and therefore requires removal or permanent bar of entry is surrender. Full stop,” Hauman said.