“The Trump administration has suspended immigration applications from citizens of 19 countries after the attack on two National Guard soldiers near the White House”, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
These are citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
According to CBS News, the ban applies to all types of forms and approvals of any final decisions (approvals, denials), as well as conducting any swearing-in ceremonies for US citizenship.
Applicants must be re-screened, including re-interviewed, so that the service can “fully assess all threats to national security,” the document said. In addition, the memorandum suggests that applications for immigration benefits that have already been approved should be reviewed.
The attack on National Guard soldiers took place on November 26, 2025, on the eve of Thanksgiving Day, one of the main holidays in the United States. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the military was shot by an Afghan citizen, “one of the many who were not vetted and allowed into the country en masse in 2021.” We are talking about Afghans who moved to the US under a special program after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan.
The next day, USCIS announced that it would stop processing all immigration requests from Afghan citizens. According to Reuters, the attacker applied for asylum in the United States in December 2024, and his application was approved on April 23, 2025 – three months after Donald Trump took office as president.