A day before the United States' biggest holiday, Thanksgiving, on the 26th, a National Guard shooting in the heart of Washington, D.C., is shaking the Trump second-term administration's immigration policy.
President Donald Trump on the 27th, the day after the incident (local time), labeled the shooting a terrorist act and took the hard-line step of saying he would conduct a sweeping reexamination of green card holders from so-called "countries of concern." It is being read as a strong warning that goes beyond simple public safety measures, signaling that even those with legal status, such as green cards (U.S. permanent residency), could be deported at any time.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Joseph Edlow said on X on the 27th that "at the direction of President Trump, I have ordered a comprehensive and thorough review of the green cards held by foreign nationals from countries of concern."
He said, "Protecting the nation is the top priority," adding, "American citizens cannot be made to shoulder the expense of the previous administration's indiscriminate resettlement policies."
Major outlets including CBS, citing experts, assessed that it is an unprecedentedly tough measure for the head of the immigration authorities to declare that the legality of already issued green cards will be reconsidered from scratch simply because the holders are from certain countries.
Raman Dulla Rakanwal, 29, identified by law enforcement as the suspect, is not a mere refugee. An Afghan national, Rakanwal served in the Zero Unit, a covert special force operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Afghanistan, specifically as a combatant in the Kandahar Strike Force (KPF). He set foot on U.S. soil through Operation Allies Welcome (OAW), conducted by the Biden administration during the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The unit Rakanwal belonged to served as the eyes and ears of U.S. forces in local operations against the Taliban, but it was also notorious enough to be called "death squads" by human rights groups. According to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, they have been accused of ruthless night raids, killing civilians, and carrying out summary executions without due process. It means a person trained as a war machine passed through the U.S. permanent residency screening net, blended into American society, and then pointed a gun at the authorities.
Local outlets, citing a Department of Homeland Security official, reported that as many as 19 countries will be subject to the green card review. They are said to include Islamic countries with strained ties to the United States—such as Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Syria—as well as North Korea, Venezuela, and Haiti. There is substantial overlap with the countries that President Trump barred or restricted from entering the United States through a proclamation in June.
Marking the Thanksgiving holiday, President Trump said in a video message from the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida that "whoever does not benefit America should be deported, no matter where they came from." He then singled out the Somali community living in Minnesota, saying, "People from Somalia are harming the United States."
This is seen as a political gambit aimed at Minnesota, where Somali immigrants live in concentrated numbers. Minnesota is a Democratic stronghold and the district of Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali refugee whose presence Trump finds particularly irksome. It is estimated that some 80,000 Somali Americans currently live in Minnesota. Although the shooter in this incident is from Afghanistan, the political arrow has effectively been directed at the Somali community, a base of Democratic support.
Within the Republican Party, voices are growing—centered on Florida Sen. Rick Scott—to pass the "Afghanistan Verification Accountability Act," which would mandate periodic and repeated vetting of refugees who entered during the Afghanistan withdrawal.
Legal experts predicted that there are numerous legal hurdles before the Trump administration's push for a comprehensive reexamination of green cards could actually lead to deportations.
To revoke a green card, the government must prove that the immigrant "concealed a material fact" or "lied" during the green card process. However, conducting a blanket reexamination of as many as 70,000 people, as in this case, is administratively close to impossible. Human rights groups argued that treating an entire group as potential terrorists on the pretext of an individual's wrongdoing clearly constitutes racial profiling.
Stephen Yale-Loehr, a Cornell Law School professor, said, "A green card is a right protected by constitutional due process," adding, "An executive order revoking green cards solely on the basis of nationality, without individualized criminal facts or evidence of fraudulent entry, is clearly constitutionally suspect." He predicted, "As with the 'Muslim travel ban' executive order under the first Trump administration, this measure is also likely to be drawn into protracted legal battles in federal court, including motions for temporary restraining orders."