The Trump administration said Friday it has halted all asylum decisions after a top immigration official said in a statement to the Financial Times that the government must “ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.”
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, said the freeze follows a statement from its director, Joseph Edlow, who told the Financial Times the agency would suspend all asylum processing after the fatal shooting of a National Guard member and the wounding of another near the White House.
Roughly 2.5 million people could be affected because the asylum backlog includes nearly 2 million cases awaiting hearings in immigration court and more than 1 million affirmative asylum applications pending at USCIS, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse and a Department of Homeland Security inspector general report.
The suspect was identified as 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who entered the United States in 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome, the emergency resettlement program created to evacuate Afghans who assisted the U.S. mission and were deemed at risk after the fall of Kabul, The Washington Post reported.
Lakanwal later pursued asylum within the U.S. system, placing him among the hundreds of thousands of Afghan evacuees who transitioned from temporary humanitarian status to formal protection claims, according to the Post’s coverage of his immigration history.
Investigators told the Post that Lakanwal underwent vetting by U.S. counterterrorism officials before entry, intensifying scrutiny of the system itself.
President Donald Trump called the shooting a “terrorist act” and said it exposed “catastrophic failures” in the immigration framework built under the prior administration, according to Time’s reporting.
Trump also announced a “permanent pause” on migration from what he called “Third World countries,” arguing the United States can no longer rely on foreign documentation he said is often incomplete or unreliable, as reported by Reuters.
Senior Republicans on Capitol Hill have demanded sweeping new restrictions, with several lawmakers telling Reuters and other outlets that refugee programs, parole authority, and asylum eligibility should be rewritten to eliminate what they call “national-security blind spots.”
Conservative groups including the Heritage Foundation and the Federation for American Immigration Reform have cited Lakanwal’s entry through Operation Allies Welcome as evidence that rapid resettlement programs and high-volume asylum pipelines pose unacceptable risks, according to their public statements this week.
House GOP leaders have also pushed the administration to restore Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” rules and tighten parole authority, arguing the United States needs a “security-first immigration doctrine” in the aftermath of the killing.
The Department of Homeland Security told Reuters it has launched a sweeping review of asylum approvals and green-card grants issued under previous administrations, focusing on applicants from countries U.S. officials label national-security risks.
Officials told Reuters the audit covers “all cases approved under previous leadership,” making it one of the broadest immigration reviews undertaken in decades.
Supporters of the freeze say the attack demonstrates that the United States must sharply restrict immigration and rebuild vetting procedures before allowing additional entrants, echoing themes Trump emphasized in his public remarks.
They argue the government must act decisively to prevent further breaches that could put American service members or civilians at risk.
Critics counter that freezing all asylum decisions punishes tens of thousands of legitimate applicants who followed the rules and now face indefinite delays, a concern highlighted in the Post’s reporting on immigrant-rights groups.
Legal experts told Reuters the halt is expected to face major court challenges, pointing to earlier rulings that blocked Trump-era asylum restrictions as unlawful.
Immigration attorneys warned in the Post’s coverage that the freeze could leave applicants in prolonged legal limbo, depending on the breadth and duration of DHS’ review.
DHS officials acknowledged to Reuters that the process is likely to be extensive due to the number of cases and the administration’s order to re-evaluate every approval from what Trump calls the “failed old system.”
For many conservatives, the shooting reinforces long-standing warnings that humanitarian admissions and rushed refugee programs can expose the country to security threats the current vetting regime cannot reliably detect.
The incident has also renewed criticism of Operation Allies Welcome, with opponents saying the program was implemented too quickly and without rigorous screening, as documented in the Post’s reconstruction of Lakanwal’s path from Afghanistan to the United States.
Edlow said in the Financial Times report that asylum processing will not resume until USCIS is certain its vetting procedures are fully secured.
USCIS has not indicated when that will happen.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.