President Donald Trump reacted angrily after two National Guard soldiers were shot in Washington, D.C., and he quickly blamed Afghan refugees, Somali immigrants, and President Joe Biden. But the facts of the case don’t fully support what he claimed.
Trump said the suspect, 29-year-old Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was brought into the United States during Biden’s Operation Allies Welcome in 2021, after the fall of Kabul. He described the evacuation flights as chaotic and unsafe, saying, “Nobody knew who was coming in.” Trump then claimed Biden extended Lakanwal’s immigration status and called Biden “the worst president in history.”
Trump also declared that the attack proved his argument that “20 million unknown, unvetted foreigners” had entered the country and were now a threat to national security. He didn’t provide evidence for this number.
Then, without any connection to the shooting, he shifted the blame toward Somali immigrants in Minnesota. He accused the Somali community of stealing government money and destroying the state, using extreme language to describe their home country and claiming they were causing chaos in America. None of this had anything to do with the D.C. shooting.
Trump hinted that he would use this incident to push for widespread deportations, even for people who are in the U.S. legally. He said the government should review every Afghan who entered under Biden and remove anyone who “does not belong here or add benefit to our country.”
However, the key detail Trump left out is that Lakanwal’s immigration status changed under Trump’s own presidency. While it is true he arrived in 2021 as a refugee during Biden’s term, he applied for asylum in 2024 — after Trump returned to office — and the Department of Homeland Security confirmed his asylum was approved in April 2025. He was legally living in the U.S. and had already started applying for a green card before the shooting happened.
As for the two injured Guard members, their names and conditions have not been officially released. The governor of West Virginia at first said two soldiers had been killed, but later corrected himself after receiving conflicting information. The soldiers were part of a large deployment of nearly 2,200 Guard members that Trump ordered to D.C., claiming the capital was in the middle of a crimewave. In reality, crime had dropped significantly compared to the previous year.
So while Trump tried to place the blame entirely on Biden and refugees, the timeline shows that the suspect had been granted asylum under Trump’s own administration — a fact that undermines his argument.
