One of the National Guard members shot in an ambush near the White House this week died of her injuries, President Donald Trump said Thursday, hours before he posted an anti-immigration screed on social media.
The president did not mention Wednesday’s shooting in his posts, but they followed days of heightened rhetoric around immigration and refugees from the Trump administration in the wake of the attack. The suspected shooter is an Afghan national, officials have said.
Sarah Beckstrom, 20, an Army specialist from West Virginia, was an “incredible person” who was “outstanding in every single way,” Trump said during a video call with service members. She died in hospital with her parents by her side, the president said. The White House said Trump had spoken with Beckstrom’s parents that evening.
Beckstrom and Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, were critically wounded in what officials called a targeted attack by a suspect who was also wounded and is in custody. Wolfe remains in the hospital.
The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, entered the U.S. in September 2021 as part of a resettlement program following the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan the previous month, officials said. Federal authorities said Lakanwal, who previously worked with the CIA, is facing multiple criminal charges.
In the wake of the shootings, the Trump administration said it would halt processing immigration requests from Afghan nationals indefinitely, and would review Afghan nationals who were admitted to the United States under the Biden administration. On Thursday, Trump ordered U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to reexamine the statuses of green-card holders from 19 countries.
The president followed this up with lengthy social media posts Thursday night in which he railed at migrants, took aim at elected Democratic officials and threatened a wide variety of immigration policy changes, without providing specifics.
In the posts, Trump said he would “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries,” end all federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens and “denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility.” The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for clarification about his comments.
“These goals will be pursued with the aim of achieving a major reduction in illegal and disruptive populations, including those admitted through an unauthorized and illegal Autopen approval process,” he wrote, repeating accusations against his predecessor, President Joe Biden.
The suspected shooter first came to the United States through Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden-era program created to help resettle Afghan nationals after the chaotic U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, according to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem.
Lakanwal had been part of one of the CIA’s “Zero Units,” The Washington Post has reported, according to several people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation.
The units, which have never been publicly acknowledged by the CIA, carried out missions to kill or capture members of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other extremist groups, with intelligence and logistical support provided by the CIA and the U.S. military.
FBI Director Kash Patel called the case a “heinous act of terrorism” but provided no additional details or information about what led him to describe the attack that way.
Police executed multiple search warrants around the country, including Lakanwal’s residence in Bellingham, Washington state, from where he drove to carry out the ambush, officials said.
Beckstrom and Wolfe, members of the West Virginia National Guards, were in the capital as part of a deployment of more than 2,000 troops from multiple states to address what Trump has called a “crime emergency” in D.C. Trump said he has directed an additional 500 troops to mobilize in Washington following the attack. A judge had recently said their presence in the city was illegal.
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