Both Afghans as well as general asylum seekers were left reeling over the weekend after the Trump administration announced further measures to severely restrict immigration in response to the shooting on Wednesday of two National Guard troops in Washington D.C. by a gunman officials identified as a 29-year-old man from Afghanistan.
West Virginia National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died from her injuries, while fellow Guard member 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe was hospitalized and in critical condition.
On Friday evening, the administration halted all asylum decisions and paused issuing visas for people from Afghanistan, citing national security concerns. The government has not provided a timeline for when these programs may be started again. Legal experts expect the decisions to be quickly challenged in court.
The changes have left hundreds of thousands of immigrants in a state of uncertainty while they await decisions on applications for asylum, a legal protection that allows immigrants to stay in the United States who fear persecution in their home countries.
The decision also impacts Afghans who supported American forces during its two-decade war in Afghanistan and are seeking a Special Immigrant Visa, created to protect Afghans who helped the American war effort.
“Afghans are terrified,” said Shawn VanDiver, the president of #AfghanEvac, a coalition of groups working to help Afghans relocate to the United States. “They’re afraid to leave their homes. They’ve been stuck in this limbo since they got here in August of 2021.”
Hussaini said he was 16 when he started working with nonprofit organizations in Afghanistan, advocating for women’s rights, education, and democracy. As the Taliban advanced while American forces withdrew, he fled to Pakistan. But alone and missing his family, he said he tried to return to Afghanistan and was detained. When he didn’t pray the way the Taliban demanded, he said, a fighter struck him with a gun.
He managed to escape and eventually made it to the United States. He said he applied for asylum in 2022 and completed his biometrics, but the interview he was told would come never materialized.
“If my asylum gets approved, I don’t have to worry about getting deported or sent back to a country where the government wants to kill me,” he said.
The Trump administration has escalated its anti-immigration agenda in the wake of the shooting, where the gunman, identified by officials as an Afghan national named Rahmanullah Lakanwal, shot two National Guard troops just blocks from the White House.
Just hours after authorities took the suspect into custody, the administration announced it had stopped processing immigration applications from Afghanistan. On Thursday, the administration said it was launching a sweeping review of Green Cards and would review all asylum cases that had been approved under the Biden administration.
Joseph Edlow, the director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, wrote in a social media post on Friday, “The safety of the American people always comes first.”
Lakanwal had worked in a CIA-backed military unit in Afghanistan before emigrating from the country. He was granted asylum in April under the Trump administration, according to reporting from The New York Times.
Elissa Steglich, an immigration law expert at the University of Texas School of Law who has helped Afghans apply for asylum, said the asylum pause could face constitutional challenges on equal protection and due process grounds. She added that a challenge could be made under the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs federal agencies, if the administration’s actions result in unreasonable delays in processing asylum applications.
Steglich said that the government already extensively vets Afghan immigrants, a process she has seen firsthand.
“In my experience, the rigor and security analysis of asylum seekers is very high,” she said. “I question what more can be done.”
Afghans in Massachusetts quickly condemned the shooting and feared for their ability to stay in the country, as well as for their loved ones who are still abroad and are seeking to join them in the United States. Nearly 200,000 Afghans have come to the United States through programs to resettle vulnerable Afghans after Taliban fighters took over the country, according to a report from the State Department.
Omead Ahmadzai, 41, moved to Massachusetts in 2009 after working for the US military in Afghanistan. He said the Taliban killed his brother-in-law in 2022, and he fears for the safety of his family members — including his wife and children — who are still in the country. The visa restrictions have halted his efforts to get them out, and he said the policy change makes him feel like he was “used” by the government.
Ahmadzai added that the actions of the gunman do not reflect the Afghan immigrant community.
“I hate what he did,” he said. “This is not supposed to be America.”
The legal statuses of New England asylum seekers are also in jeopardy. More than two million people are awaiting asylum hearings or decisions as of August 2025, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan source of immigration data.
Gary Moorehead, the director of Kataluma Refugee Hospitality, a non-profit that supports refugees and asylum seekers in the Boston area, was preparing on Saturday morning for a large feast during the evening with three Afghan families as well as asylum seekers from Ukraine, Haiti, and Zimbabwe.
The feast was planned as a celebration of the holidays, with a Thanksgiving turkey on the menu. But Moorehead said he anticipated the dinner would also include a discussion about what the Trump administration’s actions could mean for the families at the table. He said he has already heard people express sadness, frustration, and worry about what might happen to legal statuses already granted.
“When we take in people like this guy who did the shooting, we have to be alert and not naive about that,” he said. But he added that as a Christian and a patriot, the Trump administration’s decisions and rhetoric “lessen the goodness of America.”
Hussaini, the asylum seeker in Everett, said his dream is to go to school full-time, but he cannot afford it. If his asylum case is approved, he could apply for federal student aid. He said he also wants to visit his family, now living in Canada, whom he hasn’t seen since before the fall of Kabul.
“This uncertainty makes it so hard,” he said. “It feels like we have to go and start from zero again.”
Kate Selig can be reached at kate.selig@globe.com. Follow her on X @kate_selig. Jaime Moore-Carrillo can be reached at jaime.moore-carrillo@globe.com. Katie Muchnick can be reached at katie.muchnick@globe.com.
