This article originally appeared in The Dispatch on December 2, 2025.
Every Afghan national seeking resettlement in the United States is supposed to be screened against at least seven federal databases, checked for biometric matches against 2.5 million records collected during combat operations in Afghanistan, and run through the FBI’s fingerprint identification system. Despite this multi-layered process, 2025 has seen at least three violent incidents involving resettled Afghans.
The most recent of these came on November 26, 2025, when Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who had received paramilitary training to work with the CIA and was paroled into the U.S. in September 2021, allegedly shot two National Guard members two blocks from the White House. One service member later died from her injuries and the other remains in serious condition.
Lakanwal’s arrest has prompted scrutiny of how the U.S. government vetted tens of thousands of Afghan nationals who were evacuated and resettled in the U.S. as part of Operation Allies Welcome following the military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. After the shooting, the Trump administration paused all decision-making on asylum applications and stopped issuing visas for people traveling on Afghan passports.
