A suspected terror attack just blocks from the White House has ignited a political firestorm, after law enforcement sources confirmed that the alleged gunman — a former Afghan soldier who worked with U.S. intelligence agencies — had entered the country under President Joe Biden’s Operation Allies Welcome program.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, allegedly ambushed two West Virginia National Guard members near the Farragut West Metro Station on Wednesday afternoon, shooting a female soldier in the chest before firing a bullet into her head and then turning his weapon on a second guard, officials said. A nearby soldier returned fire, wounding the assailant, who was later photographed being loaded into an ambulance.
Both victims were rushed to a hospital in critical condition. The FBI is treating the shooting as a possible act of terrorism.
Lakanwal served alongside U.S. Special Forces in Kandahar as a member of the Afghan Army, according to a relative who spoke to NBC News. He had also worked with U.S. intelligence partners, including the CIA. Former CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the Biden administration used that past cooperation to justify granting him entry to the United States.
“In the wake of the disastrous Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden administration justified bringing the alleged shooter to the United States in September 2021 due to his prior work with the U.S. government,” Ratcliffe told Fox News. “The individual — and so many others — should have never been allowed to come here.”
Sources said Lakanwal later overstayed his visa and was in the country illegally at the time of the attack.
Lakanwal arrived in the U.S. under Operation Allies Welcome, a program launched during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that resettled about 90,000 Afghans. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem blasted the program on social media Wednesday night.
“The suspect who shot our brave National Guardsmen is an Afghan national who was one of the many unvetted, mass paroled into the United States under Operation Allies Welcome,” Noem wrote, refusing to use his name. “He should be starved of the glory he so desperately wants.”
Lakanwal had been living in Bellingham, Washington — a city designated for Afghan refugee resettlement — where roughly 800 Afghans were placed statewide in 2022.
President Donald Trump, speaking from Palm Beach, Florida, called the attack a “monstrous ambush” and directly blamed the Biden administration’s immigration policies.
“Based on the best available information, the Department of Homeland Security is confident that the suspect in custody is a foreigner who entered our country from Afghanistan, a hellhole on Earth,” Trump said. “He was flown in by the Biden administration in September 2021 on those infamous flights that everybody was talking about.”
Trump claimed that the last administration “let in 20 million unknown and unvetted foreigners from all over the world,” and pledged to review every Afghan admitted under Biden.
“If they can’t love our country, we don’t want them,” he said, vowing “all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien who does not belong here.”
In response to the shooting, Trump ordered 500 additional National Guard troops deployed to Washington, D.C., as authorities brace for possible additional threats.
Officials say the suspected gunman acted alone, but investigators are still searching for a motive.
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3 Responses
afghans who worked with coalition forces are under a death sentence by the taliban, so saving them was and is a moral obligation. and it’s also the smart thing to do, if american policy ever again needs the cooperation of friendly locals. let’s wait to hear about the details of this incident before throwing tens of thousands of loyal allies under the bus.
It seems the current administration did not perform their due diligence regarding to final vetting of the shooter. Yet no one is mentioning this fact. Factually the vetting of these refugees takes place in several stages the final vetting should have taken place prior to the administration giving his residency the ok in April.
It seems have been successful beyond their wildest dreams. Under Biden, they defeated the United States in a war. Under Trump, they have managed to maneuver the United States into opposing those who oppose the Taliban; in the future any Muslim will have to take into account that if fighting anti-American “militants”, they will no longer do so with the knowledge that the Americans “have their back” but rather they will do so knowing that the United States exploits its allies and then throws them under the bus.