The Afghan national accused of shooting two National Guard members near the White House this week underwent thorough vetting by counterterrorism authorities before entering the United States, according to people with direct knowledge of the case.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, arrived in the U.S. through Operation Allies Welcome (OAW), a Biden-era program that helped resettle Afghan nationals after the
U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
The shooting has brought immediate scrutiny to that and other programs, with President Donald Trump announcing plans for a full review of those admitted and immigration officials halting the processing of requests from anyone from Afghanistan. In addition, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem and other senior Trump officials claimed, without evidence, that Lakanwal was never vetted and laid blame for his presence in the U.S. on former president Joe Biden.
The security of Afghan resettlement programs under the Biden administration has been a politically fraught issue for several years, stemming in part from the hasty and chaotic U.S. evacuation effort after the fall of the Afghan government to the Taliban.
A key question from critics has been whether any evacuees managed to enter the U.S. without proper vetting. Lakanwal, however, would not have been among them, according to the individuals, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation. One of the individuals said Lakanwal was vetted years ago, before working with the CIA in Afghanistan, and then again before he arrived in the U.S. in 2021. Those examinations involved both the National Counterterrorism Center as well as the CIA, the person said.
Lakanwal was also granted asylum earlier this year, a process that would have brought its own scrutiny, according to #AfghanEvac, a coalition that supported the relocation effort — an assertion the White House did not dispute.
Homeland Security officials have said that Lakanwal arrived in the U.S. in September 2021 as part of a Biden administration initiative to resettle vulnerable Afghans, particularly those who worked along U.S. forces in Afghanistan and faced potential persecution from the Taliban. Before being admitted, all OAW applicants underwent “rigorous screening and vetting” to ensure that they were not a national security risk, officials
said at the time.
Lakanwal was initially paroled into the U.S. on humanitarian grounds, according to a law enforcement official who has been briefed on the investigation into Lakanwal’s background, along with tens of thousands of other Afghan evacuees admitted to the country on similar grounds after the Taliban takeover in 2021. Each was screened through a multiagency vetting process involving the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, CIA and the National Counterterrorism Center.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, most Afghans who arrived in the U.S. under OAW were given parole for two years following mandatory screening and vetting processes that involved biometric and biographic screenings. The parole is conditional, meaning the Afghan nationals were required to receive medical screenings, critical vaccinations and other reporting requirements.
Still, in the wake of the Wednesday shooting, Trump said his administration will conduct a full review of all Afghan nationals who were admitted to the U.S. under the Biden administration. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service on Wednesday also immediately stopped processing all immigration requests related to Afghan nationals “indefinitely pending further review of security and vetting protocols.”
In an X post, Noem said the suspect “was one of the many unvetted, mass paroled into the United States.” Vice President JD Vance, also in an X post, said Lakanwal and other Afghan refugees like him came into the U.S. “unvetted” and that “they shouldn’t have been in our country.” FBI Director Kash Patel, when asked by reporters if the Biden administration should not have admitted the suspect into the country, claimed that there had been “zero vetting” of the individual.
At the same time, the White House and Department of Homeland Security officials batted away questions of why the Trump administration granted the suspect asylum earlier this year.
A DHS spokesperson said USCIS processed Lakanwal’s asylum claim on an expedited basis under the terms of a 2023 settlement agreement with Afghan evacuees who had complained of lengthy delays in the process.
“Regardless of asylum status, this monster would not have been removed due to his parole status, granted by Joe Biden,” said a White House official, who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
Federal authorities said Lakanwal shot two members of the West Virginia National Guard on Wednesday outside of the Farragut West Metro station in downtown Washington. Army Spec. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, later died of her injuries, while Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, remained in critical condition on Friday. Lakanwal is expected to face murder charges, federal prosecutors said.
One of the several gaps in Lakanwal’s story is what happened to him in the period between his evacuation from Kabul and eventual arrival in Washington state. Despite Trump’s implication that Lakanwal arrived directly in the U.S. on one of the chaotic flights from Kabul during the last days of August 2021, all of those planes landed elsewhere.
While Trump, in remarks Thursday, called them “those infamous flights that everybody was talking about” and claimed that “nobody knew who was coming in,” the vast majority of them went to Qatar, where the Afghans were housed and underwent vetting at the U.S. air base at Al-Udeid.
Lakanwal, who the administration has said did not arrive in this country until September, would have been vetted by both U.S. and a third country, most likely Qatar, before being allowed to depart on a flight to the U.S. and housed on a military base, according to current and former U.S. and foreign officials involved in the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive subject.
“Anybody evacuated by us needed to get approved vetting both from the U.S. and the country that would be hosting them,” said an official with one of those countries. “It had to be that government, asking to get people out, signing documents saying they would host and that they had vetted them.”
Those who had worked for a U.S. government agency or in other sensitive, U.S.-allied jobs in Afghanistan and were eligible to apply for a Special Immigration Visa, or SIV, also went through another round of vetting.
SIV applicants from Afghanistan are required to prove Afghan citizenship and that they worked there “on behalf of the U.S. government for a minimum of 12 months,” along with a letter of recommendation from their U.S. supervisor. A special unit in the State Department validates paperwork and, if warranted, arranges for the required Chief of Mission approval that must also accompany all SIV applications.
At the time of the shooting, Lakanwal had received chief of mission approval but had not yet been approved for a green card, according to a fact sheet distributed by #AfghanEvac. One person familiar with the program said that in addition, the CIA had its own process for vetting and assisting its former Afghan employees.
“I assume the screening to recruit him for the CIA is much deeper and deep intrusive than any screening just for parole,” said Muzaffar Chishti, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. “So the Biden administration could not have known he was a risk.”
And once in the U.S., additional vetting would have taken place before Lakanwal and his family were assigned to a government-approved relocation agency and destination.
“It is so, so hard for folks to get in,” said Shawn VanDiver, president of #AfghanEvac. “It’s just not as easy as JD Vance and Kash Patel and these others want to make [it seem]. It’s just not that easy.”
In one of his first acts on entering office, Trump froze the number of visas available for Afghans, many of whom were far along in the SIV approval process or had already been approved.
VanDiver suggested that Lakanwal eventually submitted a separate asylum application due to the extended wait time and unclear future for SIVs.
“He passed vetting a million times,” VanDiver said. “If he had been a problem, he would have gotten caught when he went to another base … when he applied for SIV, for Chief of Mission approval, when he got asylum.”
The immigration policy changes imposed Wednesday, meanwhile, extend a June rule imposing restrictions and additional scrutiny on foreign nationals seeking entry into the U.S. from 19 countries. Now, the policy is targeting foreign nationals living in the United States. For those not granted asylum or SIV, temporary humanitarian parole status given to most of the Afghans who were admitted to the U.S. has already expired, with the administration not offering any extension.
Many Afghans waiting for resettlement to the U.S. in other countries that agreed to accept them after they were evacuated, and their allies, responded with shock Thursday to the news that USCIS would stop processing their cases.
Andrew Sullivan, the executive director of No One Left Behind, a veteran-led group supporting Afghan evacuees, told The Washington Post on Thursday that while he understands the Trump administration’s imperative to review Afghan resettlement programs in the wake of the shooting, he hopes the administration can find a way to balance the need for rigorous vetting with the imperative to protect Afghans who helped save American lives.
“I have, without a doubt, had my life saved by Afghans that worked on our behalf,” said Sullivan, who served two combat deployments in Iraq and commanded an infantry company in Afghanistan. “I hope that we can work constructively with the administration to ensure that there are no risks for Afghans that have arrived. But, my personal experience has been they’re some of the most dutiful and patriotic people on this planet.”
Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.
Afghanistan Peace Campaign