The director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Joseph B. Edlow, announced Friday the suspension of all asylum decisions for migrants following Wednesday’s shooting of two National Guard members just blocks from the White House—one of whom died Thursday—allegedly perpetrated by an Afghan national.
“USCIS has suspended all asylum decisions until we can ensure that every foreign national is vetted and assessed to the highest possible standard. The safety of the American people is always our top priority,” Edlow stated in a message on his Twitter account.
The U.S. State Department announced shortly before that it is “immediately” suspending the issuance of visas to Afghan citizens, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio emphasized that the United States “has no higher priority than protecting our nation and our people.”
“The State Department has immediately suspended the issuance of visas to individuals traveling with Afghan passports. The Department is taking all necessary measures to protect U.S. national security and public safety,” the institution stated in a message posted on its official Twitter account.
President Trump has linked this incident to immigration, asserting that this Afghan citizen was “brought in by the previous administration,” that of Joe Biden, after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s rise to power. “For the most part, we don’t want them. They come in illegally,” he declared.
This same Friday, the White House occupant expressed his intention to “permanently pause” immigration from “all Third World countries” in a plan that will include eliminating “millions of illegal admissions” during his predecessor’s term.
“Only reverse migration can completely remedy this situation,” he asserted, before defining that “situation,” in a second publication sent immediately afterwards, as a “social dysfunction” caused, according to him, by the burden of refugees and the migrant population, which would be “much larger” than the official figures.
