Trump to ‘permanently pause’ migration from ‘third world’ after shooting of National Guard in DC

By ANDREW BERNARD

(JNS.org) – U.S. President Donald Trump announced shortly after midnight on Friday that he would “permanently pause migration from all third-world countries,” after an Afghan immigrant allegedly shot and killed a member of the West Virginia National Guard near the White House.

U.S. President Donald Trump addresses the nation on the shooting of two National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C., from his residence in Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Nov. 26, 2025. Photo by Daniel Torok/White House)

Trump wrote the message as a “Thanksgiving salutation,” before launching into criticism of the “stupid” Americans, who have allowed the country to be “divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged and laughed at” over immigration policy, including former president Joe Biden.

“I will permanently pause migration from all third world countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by sleepy Joe Biden’s autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our country, end all federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility and deport any foreign national, who is a public charge, security risk or non-compatible with Western civilization,” Trump wrote.

Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national, was arrested on Wednesday for allegedly shooting Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, near Farragut Square Park, just north of the White House. Beckstrom died of her wounds on Thursday, and Wolfe reportedly remains in critical condition.

Lakanwal entered the United States in 2021 as part of the Biden administration’s “Operation Allies Welcome,” a resettlement program for Afghans who had served with U.S. forces. Before Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, Lakanwal served with an Afghan counterterrorism unit that worked closely with the CIA, The New York Times reported.

It’s not clear which countries will face new immigration restrictions following the announcement. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced on Wednesday that it was halting all requests from Afghan nationals pending further review and issued new guidance for negative factors to be considered for requests from 19 “high-risk countries” that Trump previously scrutinized in an executive order.

Those countries include many of the world’s conflict hotspots, including Afghanistan, the Republic of the Congo, Chad, Libya, Yemen, Sudan and Somalia.

JNS sought comment from the White House and U.S. State Department about what countries were included in Trump’s “third world” announcement on Friday.

In addition to criticizing Biden, much of Trump’s message focused on Minnesota, where he claimed “Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for ‘prey’” under the governance of Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

“The seriously retarded governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence or both, while the worst ‘congressman/woman’ in our country, Ilhan Omar, always wrapped in her swaddling hijab, and who probably came into the U.S.A. illegally in that you are not allowed to marry your brother, does nothing but hatefully complain about our country, its Constitution and how ‘badly’ she is treated,” Trump wrote.

He added that “her place of origin is a decadent, backward and crime-ridden nation, which is essentially not even a country for lack of government, military, police, schools, etc.” (A City Journal investigation suggested that Minnesota tax dollars helped fund the Somali terror group al-Shabab.)

Omar has long faced questions about her previous marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, who shares a surname with her father. Whether they have any familial relationship is unknown, but Omar has denied that Elmi is her brother.

Although Trump said that his migration pause would apply to “all third-world countries,” he reiterated, on Friday, his claim that white South Africans face a “genocide,” for which he created an asylum program in February.

“They are killing white people and randomly allowing their farms to be taken from them,” Trump wrote. “South Africa has demonstrated to the world they are not a country worthy of membership anywhere, and we are going to stop all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately.”