Officials with the Trump administration have filed an immigration detainer against a 29-year-old Afghan national who was arrested in Texas after allegedly posting a TikTok video boasting about building a bomb to target the Fort Worth area.
Mohammad Dawood Alokozay was arrested on Nov. 25 in Fort Worth on state charges of making a terroristic threat, according to Fox News. The arrest was executed in a coordinated operation by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, following an investigation into a TikTok video Alokozay posted that appeared to show him constructing a bomb with the stated intent to target a building in the Fort Worth area. The video was deemed a credible threat by authorities, prompting swift action to prevent potential harm.
Alokozay’s arrest came just one day before another 29-year-old Afghan national, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, shot two West Virginia National Guard members in Washington, D.C., just blocks from the White House. U.S. Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, one of the two critically wounded Guard members, later died from her injuries.
On Nov. 29, Asst. Department of Homeland Security Sec. Tricia McLaughlin announced U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has lodged an immigration detainer against Alokozay, who entered the U.S. as a lawful permanent resident on Sept. 2, 2022, under the Biden administration's Operation Allies Welcome program.
Lakanwal also entered the U.S. in 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden administration initiative to resettle Afghans who had worked with U.S. forces before the Taliban returned to power. Afghans were evacuated en masse to be resettled in Europe and the U.S. following the Biden administration's hasty withdrawal from the country.
A law enforcement official told The Washington Post that Lakanwal, who had helped the CIA in Afghanistan, was initially granted humanitarian parole and later approved for asylum by the Trump administration earlier this year.
Last week, the Trump administration announced it would “permanently pause migration” from Afghanistan and other third-world nations after the two National Guard members were shot just blocks from the White House.
USCIS issued new guidelines on Thanksgiving Day, which halted the admittance of refugees from 19 countries deemed “high-risk” in response to the DC attack hours before the president announced that Beckstrom had died from her injuries suffered in the shooting.
The shooter, later identified as 29-year-old Lakanwal, was arrested immediately after the attack.
Under the revised USCIS guidelines, nationals from Afghanistan, Burma, Burundi, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, and Yemen will no longer be approved for admission into the U.S.
The announcement comes after the Trump administration halted refugee resettlement from Afghanistan and the entry of Afghan nationals in the first year of his second term, and is part of a broader White House effort to review all refugees admitted under the Biden administration.
The updated guidance, including consideration of country-specific factors such as administrative ability to issue secure identity documents, is pursuant to President Trump’s Presidential Proclamation (PP) 10949 in June, which called for the federal government to take actions to “ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists or other threats to our national security.”
In a statement released last Thursday, USCIS Director Joseph Edlow pointed to actions taken under the Biden administration which allowed for a reported 77,000 Afghans into the U.S. under the “Operation Allies Welcome” program, including Lakanwal, who entered the United States in 2021, under the program, which allowed him to remain for two years in the U.S. while he applied for permanent status.
“Yesterday’s horrific events make it abundantly clear the Biden administration spent the last four years dismantling basic vetting and screening standards, prioritizing the rapid resettlement of aliens from high-risk countries over the safety of American citizens,” said Edlow. “The Trump administration takes the opposite approach. Effective immediately, I am issuing new policy guidance that authorizes USCIS officers to consider country-specific factors as significant negative factors when reviewing immigration requests. American lives come first.”
The USCIS announcement comes on the heels of Trump’s Thanksgiving message to the American people, in which he characterized "most" of the nation’s 53 million immigrants as being "on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels.”
Calling the “refugee burden ... the leading cause of social dysfunction” in the U.S., Trump added that such conditions “did not exist after World War II,” and said he 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.”
