Noem Blames Biden Vetting in DC Guard Terror Attack
“These countries that people have been traveling from for years under the Biden administration, their governments did not tell us who they were.”
South Dakota Governor and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday that the Afghan national accused of murdering a DC National Guard soldier was “radicalized” after he arrived in the United States, blasting the Biden administration for letting him in without proper screening.
According to the New York Post, 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a former member of the CIA-linked Afghan “Zero Units,” allegedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” before shooting two Guard members in Washington. Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, was killed. Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, remains in critical condition.
Noem said on NBC’s Meet the Press that investigators believe Lakanwal became radicalized only after entering the country.
“We believe he was radicalized since he has been here in this country. We believe it was through connections in his home community and state and we will continue to talk to those who interacted with him.”
She said the Biden administration allowed thousands of unvetted Afghans into the United States following the 2021 withdrawal and that the consequences of that failure are now unavoidable.
"Will you deport people with pending asylum claims?"@Sec_Noem: "We will if they should be, absolutely. Yes. We are going to go through every single person that has a pending asylum claim." pic.twitter.com/3puyEdIopl
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) November 30, 2025
“We will deport people with pending asylum claims if they should be. We are going to go through every single person who has a pending asylum claim here in this country. One of the requirements of asylum is that you have to come in every year for a checkup, an interview process, and a re-vetting. We are going to expedite that immediately for anyone who has an asylum claim today. We will ensure that they deserve to still be in this country, that the reasons they claimed asylum are still in place, and that they are not here being radicalized or perpetuating dangerous criminal activity against Americans.”
Noem said this new review will include every existing asylum claimant and could result in broad removals.
The New York Post notes that Lakanwal himself had applied for asylum in December 2024 and received approval this year.
The shooting has already triggered a sweeping immigration crackdown from the Trump administration. Noem reiterated that immigrants from “Third World Countries” are subject to deportation if their vetting cannot be verified.
“We will go through every single person. These countries that people have been traveling from for years under the Biden administration, their governments did not tell us who they were. We did not have a proper vetting process and we are not going to allow this to continue.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi also told Fox News Sunday that more information about Lakanwal’s radicalization is coming, saying, “He was radicalized. You are going to hear a lot more about that.”
The Biden Administration created one of the worst national security crisis in American history with the abandonment of Afghanistan. Biden let into our country nearly 100,000 unvetted Afghan aliens — figuring out who they were and their intentions when they were already on… pic.twitter.com/DhWUs2E28g
— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) November 30, 2025
“When the abandonment of Afghanistan happened, the Biden administration put people on airplanes and brought them to the United States without vetting them. They brought them into our country and said they would vet them afterwards. To vet people properly, you need cooperation from their government. You need a stable government willing to give you information, contacts, background details, and biometrics that identify an individual and their dates of service. All of that vetting should have been done by the Biden administration. President Trump has completely changed that now. We are using social media content, contacts, biometric data, and all the information we collect when we vet individuals. We know who they are and why they are here. Unfortunately, this individual’s entire process happened under Joe Biden’s watch.”
The New York Post reports that Trump has ordered a “permanent pause” on migration from all third-world countries until DHS completes a full re-vetting and clears the 1.5 million case asylum backlog.
Noem said the system will not reopen until that work is finished.
“It will start when we know we have dealt with the backlog because they allowed the asylum system to be abused in such a way.”
The investigation into the DC shooting is ongoing, and officials say more details about Lakanwal’s radicalization timeline will be released soon.
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Comments
Let’s be sure to remember that while it was the “Biden administration” that allowed the murderer in the country, ANY other Democrat administration would have done the same thing.
Biden’s policies were Democrat Party policies.
The simplest vet for most not from things like this disastrous Biden move is to simply vet whether they applied for asylum in the first treaty country they arrived in outside of their own. If the answer is no, then they go right back to that country to start the process there.
Maybe I’m alone in this sentiment but you don’t need to vet anyone that you a) kick out of the country and b) don’t admit in the first place.
No matter how valuable a barn cat is, he’s not a housecat.
It’s reasonable to keep a jerrycan of gas on hand to fuel your power equipment, but you don’t store it in your garage.
What vetting.
They were so desperate to change the narrative of ‘abandoning’ Afghanistan that they just loaded planes full without even verifying their identities to begin with, never mind actual vetting, all so they could spew BS about ‘XXX AFGHANIS EVACUATED’.
Everybody responsible should go to prison for this farce. They compromised our national security and they KNEW what they were doing.
Hang on, if he was radicalized only after he came here, then what kind of vetting could possibly have caught him? How can we blame the lack of vetting when at the time he would have passed even a proper one?
He’s a Muslim, Milhouse. Try to keep up.
If you’re suggesting that he could have been vetted out simply for being a Moslem, that’s illegal. The statute giving the president authority to exclude people as against the national interest specifically bans him from doing so on racial or religious grounds.
That’s exactly what I’m saying; no need to tiptoe around it.
There are many things that are illegal but are nonetheless completely correct.
You can either have a free republic or you can suffer Islam. You cannot do both.
If the president breaks the law then you don’t have a free republic, you have a dictatorship.
He would have been vetted for susceptibility to host country radicalization.
How on earth can one measure that?
Skin color, religion and accent.
And that is explicitly against the law.
There would be no discrimination based directly on these characteristics, but a decision based on the mental state produced by the interaction of these factors given their relative weights and associations.