Trump immigration crackdown plans are rapidly intensifying across the administration after the killing of a 20-year-old member of the West Virginia National Guard in Washington, D.C.
Key Points
President Trump and senior aides are moving to broaden a “reverse migration” agenda that targets millions of immigrants, including many who are in the United States legally. The focus is on people from countries the White House labels “high risk,” alongside those in the country without legal status.
The shift was signaled in a series of statements from the president and key agencies following the death of U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, and the arrest of an Afghan national who entered the country in 2021.
D.C. Killing Triggers New ‘Reverse Migration’ Push
The latest Trump immigration crackdown drive followed a Thanksgiving call with military members in which the president announced Beckstrom’s death. She and another member of the West Virginia National Guard were shot Wednesday in Washington, D.C.
Federal prosecutors plan to charge Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who arrived in the United States after the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, with first-degree murder.
Within hours, Trump posted on Truth Social that, “Even as we have progressed technologically, Immigration Policy has eroded those gains and living conditions for many. I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover.”
He later added, “Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation,” underscoring his desire not only to curb new arrivals but also to remove people already in the country.
Top officials quickly echoed the message. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wrote on social media Friday morning, “The stakes have never been higher, and the goal has never been more clear: Remigration now.”
How the Trump Immigration Crackdown Expands Beyond Illegal Entry
The new phase of the Trump immigration crackdown goes beyond border crossings and undocumented arrivals.
According to recent statements, the administration aims to remove many legal immigrants who were born in countries considered “high risk” by the White House, not just those who entered without authorization.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) director Joe Edlow said existing restrictions around 19 such countries will now be expanded. Under the revised approach, anyone from those countries who is in the United States and applies for a green card will, in most cases, be denied.
These moves follow an earlier blitz of policies intended to stop migrants from coming to the United States and to deport those already here. Many of those efforts have drawn legal challenges, and courts have at times blocked officials from proceeding. Nonetheless, Trump administration officials have long signaled they want to go further, including by revoking the legal status of foreign-born people they argue should never have received that status.
Immediate Actions: Halt to Afghan Processing and Asylum Decisions
In the immediate aftermath of the D.C. shooting, officials outlined at least three specific steps, framed as a direct response.
First, DHS said it had “immediately and indefinitely” stopped processing all immigration requests related to people from Afghanistan, pending a review of security and vetting protocols.
Second, Edlow announced that USCIS had halted all asylum decisions until every applicant is “vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.” This pause extends the Trump immigration crackdown into cases that were already moving through the system.
Days before the shooting, DHS had already launched an internal review of all refugee cases approved during the Biden administration. That process will reopen the immigration files of hundreds of thousands of refugees who were vetted abroad before being allowed to move to the United States, potentially putting at risk the permanent legal status they were previously granted.
On Thursday, DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said the review would also encompass all asylum cases approved under President Joe Biden. While refugees are selected and screened overseas, asylum applications involve people who are already in the United States and claim they face persecution if returned to their home countries.
Legal Uncertainty Around Revoking Existing Status
Even as the Trump immigration crackdown moves into past approvals, questions remain over the legal basis for stripping protections already granted.
It is not clear what authority the administration could use to revoke previously approved refugee or asylum cases, unless officials can prove that an application included an intentional falsehood or missed intelligence connecting a person to terrorist activity.
Lakanwal’s case illustrates the complexity. A U.S. official and AfghanEvac, a nonprofit working to resettle Afghan nationals, said he was granted asylum in April. Before that, he had temporary immigration status under a Biden-era program for Afghan nationals who assisted the U.S. government.
Administration officials said that even without the asylum approval, he could not have been removed from the United States because he had already been paroled into the country. They added that the Biden administration had agreed to a settlement requiring the government to quickly adjudicate his asylum claim.
Financial Tools Added to the Trump Immigration Crackdown
Alongside visa and status reviews, the Trump immigration crackdown is increasingly turning to financial policy tools.
On Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that, at Trump’s direction, the department would propose rules blocking immigrants from receiving refunded portions of certain tax benefits, including the earned-income tax credit.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which typically focuses on anti-money-laundering and other illicit finance, announced it would begin monitoring cross-border remittances to catch immigrants in the country illegally.
These measures are designed to limit access to public benefits and financial channels for certain immigrants, particularly those with minimal financial means or unresolved status, building on earlier plans officials had prepared even before the D.C. shooting.
Critics Warn of ‘Collective Punishment’ as Advocacy Groups Respond
The sweeping nature of the Trump immigration crackdown has drawn sharp criticism from immigrant advocates and refugee organizations, especially after it was linked directly to the D.C. killing.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, called the approach “wrongheaded,” saying that “jumping to collective punishment is wrongheaded.” He added that Americans who believe that “All men are created equal” have a duty to push back against what he described as “far right radicals who are trying to divide us,” responding to DHS’s public call for “remigration.”
The Evacuate Our Allies coalition, which focuses on resettling at-risk Afghans, stressed that Lakanwal’s alleged actions “do not reflect the sacrifices Afghans made during the war in Afghanistan and the contributions they continue to make in the United States.”
Many prominent Democrats, however, limited their public remarks to condemning the violence and describing the shooting as a tragedy, without directly addressing the broader policy shift.
What Comes Next for Immigrants Under the Trump Immigration Crackdown
The latest developments suggest that the Trump immigration crackdown is broadening on multiple fronts at once: entry restrictions, reviews of existing legal status, and financial policies aimed at immigrants already living in the United States.
Before the shooting, officials had already been exploring options to further limit legal immigration for people with minimal financial means and to identify individuals they consider undesirable within the country, not just abroad. The D.C. killing accelerated those efforts and provided a new public framing in terms of “reverse migration” and “remigration.”
With processing for Afghans halted, asylum decisions frozen, refugee and asylum approvals under review, and new tax and remittance rules in the pipeline, millions of immigrants from poorer and “high risk” countries could see their status, benefits or future applications affected.
How courts will respond to new attempts to revoke longstanding protections remains uncertain, and the legal boundaries of revisiting past approvals are not yet fully defined. But for now, the direction of policy is clear: the administration is using a high-profile crime to press ahead with one of its most far-reaching efforts to reshape the nation’s immigration system.
