By Ted Hesson, Julia Harte and Kristina Cooke
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump is moving to clamp down on legal immigration into the U.S. after an Afghan immigrant was accused of ambushing National Guard members, a crackdown that echoes Trump’s first-term restrictions and could face similar challenges.
Less than two days after authorities said Rahmanullah Lakanwal opened fire on guard members, killing one and critically wounding another, Trump halted processing of Afghan immigration applications, ordered a review of all people approved for asylum in the previous administration, and signaled he would expand vetting under a travel ban on people coming from 19 countries.
Since returning to office in January, Trump has aggressively prioritized immigration enforcement, sending federal agents to major U.S. cities and turning away asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. His administration has frequently highlighted the deportation push but put less emphasis on efforts to reshape legal immigration.
The flurry of promised restrictions since the attack on Wednesday now suggests an increased focus by his administration on legal immigration framed around protecting national security and casting blame on former President Joe Biden for more liberal policies.
While some restrictions rolled out in recent days are new – such as pausing all Afghan immigration applications – others build on Trump policies that stretch back to his 2017-2021 presidency.
“I think they’re just going to potentially accelerate their plans, the plans they’ve had all along the way, which are not making us safer,” said Doug Rand, a former senior adviser at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under Biden.
TRUMP LOSES GROUND ON IMMIGRATION WITH AMERICANS
Critics say the Trump administration is using an isolated incident to unfairly demonize immigrants from Afghanistan and other nations labeled as security risks.
“This violent act does not reflect the Afghan community, which continues to contribute across the United States and undergoes some of the most extensive vetting of any immigrant population,” the group AfghanEvac, a coalition of veterans and others to support Afghan immigrants, said in a statement.
In an interview with Fox News, Republican U.S. Representative Mike Lawler of New York blamed the Biden administration for ineffective vetting of refugees from Afghanistan, but said the U.S. should not abandon its commitment to Afghans who aided U.S. forces during the 20-year war there.
“We want to make sure that everybody is very clearly vetted, that they meet the strictest of requirements,” he said. “But I want to stress, you cannot cast aspersions on every single person that came from Afghanistan.”
Jessica Vaughan, policy director for the Center for Immigration Studies, which backs lower levels of immigration, said some immigrants come from countries from which the U.S. receives limited or unreliable information, or where terror groups operate, making vetting difficult.
“We have to be more careful with applicants from these places,” she said.
The new Trump push to restrict legal immigration comes as he has lost ground with Americans on his signature policy issue.
Reuters/Ipsos polls show Trump’s approval rating on immigration has faltered as his administration has surged masked immigration agents to U.S. cities in recent months, generating pushback from residents.
Some 41% approved of Trump’s handling of immigration as of mid-November, down from a peak of 50% in mid-March, Reuters/Ipsos polls show.
OFFICIALS VOW MAJOR RESTRICTIONS BUT TAKE MORE LIMITED STEPS
Over the past two days, Trump and top officials have suggested on social media that the administration could implement sweeping changes to the legal immigration system but U.S. agencies so far have announced more limited actions.
In a late-night post to his Truth Social platform on Thursday, Trump said his administration would “permanently pause” migration from all “Third World Countries.”
When asked for a list of the countries, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security pointed to the 19 countries covered by Trump’s existing travel ban – 12 of which already face complete bans, including Afghanistan.
Joe Edlow, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in an X post on Thursday that he had ordered “a full scale, rigorous reexamination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern.”
In an announcement hours later, USCIS said the review would focus on the 19 travel ban countries and be limited to pending or future applications.
The Department of Homeland Security said after the attack that it was reviewing all asylum cases approved during the Biden administration.
BROAD REOPENING OF CASES WOULD BE UNPRECEDENTED
The review comes in addition to a similar effort launched last week to re-examine refugees who entered the country from abroad under Biden’s administration.
Michael Valverde, a former USCIS associate director of operations, said the agency frequently reviews concerning cases but that a broad reopening of hundreds of thousands of cases would be unprecedented.
“It would be very time consuming and likely would increase delays to those waiting for their initial decisions,” he said.
In his post on Truth Social, Trump also said he would end federal benefits for non-citizens, denaturalize “migrants who undermine domestic tranquility,” and deport immigrants who are “non-compatible with Western civilization.”
Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, said stripping federal benefits from all non-citizens would be quickly struck down by courts. The Supreme Court ruled in 1971 that it was unconstitutional to restrict welfare benefits to only U.S. citizens.
“Especially with respect to people who are lawfully here, where benefits are guaranteed by statute, that’s an easy call for the federal courts,” Chishti said.
The Trump administration has already sought to make denaturalizations – stripping citizenship from immigrants – more of a focus. But any effort to deport immigrants solely on their perceived compatibility with Western civilization would be novel and almost certainly face legal challenges.
In response to a request for comment, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson accused Democrats of blocking efforts to remove potential threats.
“The Trump administration is taking every measure possible – in the face of unrelenting Democrat opposition – to get these monsters out of our country and clean up the mess made by the Biden administration,” she said.
Democrats say Trump’s immigration crackdown has swept up non-criminals and split apart families rather than focusing on serious criminal offenders.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Julia Harte in New York City, and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Ismail Shakil and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Donna Bryson and Deepa Babington)
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