The senseless shooting of National Guard members Sarah Beckstrom and Andrew Wolfe in Washington, D.C. is a tragedy.
As of this writing, Beckstrom, only 20, died and Wolfe, just 24, is “fighting for his life,” as President Donald Trump put it.
The person responsible for such a crime should obviously be held accountable and punished accordingly.
Of course, given the victims and location, this double-slaying has political implications.
The suspected shooter, Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, reportedly received asylum from the Trump administration in April of this year. Lakanwal has been in country since 2021, resettled from Afghanistan under “Operation Allies Welcome.”
According to Reuters, Lakanwal, who worked with CIA-backed forces in Afghanistan, was “vetted by the U.S. because of his work with U.S. government partners during the war in Afghanistan, and no potentially disqualifying information had been found.” While residing in Washington state, he also had no criminal record.
Again, the Trump administration, as restrictive as it is, granted him asylum. At least based on the information available so far, there’s no reason to believe he was wrongly granted asylum.
Clearly, something went wrong for him to do what he’s accused of doing. Figuring out what went wrong, and why, is going to be uncovered over the course of an investigation.
Instead of proceeding in a thoughtful and reasonable way, the Trump administration, has instead taken to wild rhetoric and wild policy responses to all of this.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson declared, “This animal would’ve never been here if not for Joe Biden’s dangerous policies which allowed countless unvetted criminals to invade our country and harm the American people.”
No, that wasn’t the unhinged ramblings of some crazy person on Facebook, that was a White House spokesperson. Again, Lakanwal was vetted, worked for the U.S., entered the U.S. under a federal program and was granted asylum by the Trump administration.
The president, meanwhile, doubled down on his go-to policy of punishing immigrants.
“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,” he declared on Truth Social.
Of course, no one knows what “permanently pause” means, or which countries he considers “Third World Countries,” or how this sort of approach logically follows from what one person did. How would banning, for example, a software engineer from Laos coming to the United States be a reasonable policy reaction to what one Afghan asylee is accused of doing?
He also said he would “denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility,” whatever that means and deport immigrants deemed “non-compatible with Western civilization,” again, whatever that means.
Indulging in this sort of demagoguery and pandering to ultranationalist fever dreams might feel righteous for the Trump administration, but it’s both illogical and unjust.
Letting the justice system run its course and evaluating whether there was any obvious failure in the vetting process of Lakanwal would be a rational course of action.
Instead, Trump is doubling down on his divisive rhetoric, punishing legal immigrants and threatening a draconian federal dragnet to suss out what compatibility with Western civilization entails.
A just America is not one which collectively punishes people purely because of who they are and where they’re from. A just America is one which upholds and defends the integrity of all individuals. That’s what makes America great.
Unsurprisingly, Trump doesn’t understand what makes America great.
Sal Rodriguez can be reached at salrodriguez@scng.com