I first met Asad when the two of us worked together in Afghanistan soon after the initial fall of the Taliban in 2001. Like many of his compatriots, he fled the country as internationally-supported efforts to nurture democracy there crumbled, eventually settling in Virginia.
Following the Nov. 26 shooting of two National Guard citizen-soldiers in Washington DC by a mentally unstable Afghan, Asad is now frightened for himself and his family.
“Many were so happy to be here so they could pursue this American Dream they had read about, they had heard about,” said Asad (who asked we only use his first name for fear of reprisals). “What I tell my daughters is please, don’t take this for granted.”
Asad is now a naturalized U.S. citizen. He works in higher education and plays a vital role in helping new Afghan immigrants integrate into U.S. community life while building civic engagement. After the shooting, he says that work has become far more complicated.
“Something that really scared me was that one of the MAGA influencers urged Trump to ignore the law and just deport all immigrants,” said Asad.
The shooting suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, served in one of four CIA-trained and supervised “Zero units” reported to have killed more than 450 civilians, sometimes with U.S. soldiers participating. In 2018, the New York Times reported that one of the units engaged in multiple atrocities in Khost—viciously killing 13 civilians, including four children in a night raid.
Lakanwal was granted asylum by the Trump administration earlier this year.
The day after the shooting, the president posted to his Truth Social platform, “Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation,” adding, “Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — You won’t be here for long!”
Administration officials were quick to act. On December 4th, a MAGA Congressman from Texas introduced H.R. 6447 with its stated intent to “terminate the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa program.” That program was designed specifically to protect Afghans likely to be persecuted by the Taliban because of their collaboration with U.S. forces.
On December 11, in a Congressional hearing, the Trump administration claimed without evidence that 2,000 Afghans admitted under the Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome are terrorists.
This week the president promised to ramp up “denaturalizations,” setting a quota of 100-200 to be stripped of citizenship each month. Trump also announced a dramatic expansion of the travel ban to 39 countries, doubling the number of nations affected by the travel restrictions. The changes are set to go into effect Jan. 1.
Officials have also promised a “thorough re-review of benefit requests” from immigrants born in those countries while putting a hold on all asylum applications submitted after the first day of the Biden administration.
John Slocum, executive director of Refugee USA, estimates that about 233,000 visa applications have been blocked by the new “pause” in US Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) processing.
Even if funding were available to re-vet immigrants (Afghans and all other asylum applicants admitted to the U.S. during the Biden administration), it is unclear how such reassessments could determine effectively and fairly whether an admission was unjustified.
All that is known about specific strategies to date is there will likely be more intrusive reviews of individuals’ social media postings or neighborhood visits to determine an applicant’s “good moral” character. Neither are likely to be effective, and both raise troublesome legal issues.
Some 61 Democratic lawmakers, meanwhile, drafted a letter this week attacking the president’s policies, accusing the administration of exploiting the shooting to “sow division and inflame fear.” Trump’s response, they said, “will not make America safer.”
Indeed, national origin is not a reasonable basis for assessing the likelihood an individual will engage in violence. According to the FBI, there were 12 incidents of “open space” shootings (similar to the DC metro shooting) last year—none of them by immigrants. An analysis of mass shootings by the Cato Institute estimated that Americans are 6.5 times more likely to be killed in such a shooting by a native-born citizen than by a foreign-born person.
None of that, however, has stalled what amounts to a cynical recycling of Trump’s longstanding xenophobia, leaving Afghans in a state of fear and uncertainty. On a recent webinar, lawyers seeking to provide legal advice to Afghan immigrants were besieged with questions.
“You mentioned that one has to talk to an attorney before traveling from and to the United States,” queried one man. “You also mentioned that there is no clear instruction how ICE will re-vet and review Afghan cases. My question is: How does talking to an attorney help us when nobody has a clear picture of what ICE intends to do?”
Hina Fatima with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says the detention of Afghans markedly increased during the first 2 weeks after the shooting. Families, meanwhile, are reportedly getting text messages requesting them to come in for previously unscheduled meetings with ICE.
“ICE strategy is to overwhelm everyone with changes in the rules and policies,” explains Kudrat Choudry-Kontilis, with CAIR’s California chapter. “Misinformation is in the ascendence.”
Years back, when Asad was a young political science student at Kabul University, I, and others, had known him as a thoughtful analyst of public affairs who we had hoped to be a lucid voice for nascent democracy in Afghanistan. Now, here in the U.S., his voice is muted.
“I have been traumatized by this and my family has too,” he says, adding he worries about the consequences of Trump’s rhetoric on the wider community.
“I’ve begun to worry if people would ask me where I am from… I know that’s just a normal part of conversation. I have to say that I am an Afghan, but what if it ignites bad feelings?”
Ed Kissam spent three years in Afghanistan where he supervised a longitudinal survey of student progress in a large USAID-funded accelerated community learning program. He also provided technical support in designing and analyzing data from a survey of rural health care in five of the country’s rural provinces.
