The United States is freezing all asylum decisions, officials said Friday, as President Donald Trump hardened his anti-migrant stance after an Afghan national allegedly shot two National Guard members this week in Washington.

Wednesday’s shooting, which left one soldier dead, triggered a new round of immigration restrictions, with Trump also vowing to suspend migration from what he called “third-world countries.”

Joseph Edlow, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the agency had “halted all asylum decisions until we can ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.”

The move followed Trump’s announcement Thursday that he planned to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover.”

When asked what nationalities would be affected, the Department of Homeland Security pointed to an existing list of 19 countries, including Afghanistan, Cuba, Haiti, Iran, and Myanmar, already under U.S. travel restrictions since June.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday the United States had temporarily stopped issuing visas to anyone traveling on Afghan passports.

“The United States has no higher priority than protecting our nation and our people,” he said.

Suspect linked to CIA-backed force

The shooting brought together three politically charged issues: Trump’s deployment of troops inside the country, immigration policy and the legacy of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan.

Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, who allegedly opened fire just blocks from the White House, previously served in a CIA-backed “partner force” that fought the Taliban.

He arrived in the U.S. through a resettlement program after the 2021 American withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington, said Friday that Lakanwal would face a murder charge.

Sarah Beckstrom, a 20-year-old member of the West Virginia National Guard deployed to Washington for what Trump called an anti-crime initiative, died from her injuries. The second soldier, 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe, was “fighting for his life,” Pirro said on Fox News.

Attorney General Pam Bondi vowed to seek the death penalty for Lakanwal, calling him a “monster.”

Broader immigration actions

In a social media post Thursday, Trump also threatened to reverse “millions” of admissions granted under former president Joe Biden, escalating his long-running anti-immigration rhetoric.

Separately, USCIS said it would reexamine green cards for individuals who migrated from the same 19 countries cited by Homeland Security.

More than 1.6 million green card holders, about 12 percent of all permanent residents, were born in those countries, according to data reviewed by AFP. Afghanistan accounts for more than 116,000.

Shawn VanDiver, president of AfghanEvac, which helped resettle Afghans after the U.S. withdrawal, condemned the freeze on Afghan visas. “They are using a single violent individual as cover for a policy they have long planned,” he said.

Officials said Lakanwal had been living in Washington state with his family and drove across the country before the shooting.

Trump insisted Lakanwal had been granted unvetted access to the United States because of Biden-era asylum policies. AfghanEvac countered that Afghan arrivals underwent “some of the most extensive security vetting” of any migrants and noted Lakanwal applied for asylum under Biden but received it later, during Trump’s term.