Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday that the Afghan immigrant accused of fatally shooting a National Guard member in Washington, DC, was "radicalized" after arriving in the United States in 2021, Fox News reports. Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, was identified as the suspect in last week's attack near the White House that left one Guard member dead and another critically wounded. Noem told NBC News that officials believe Lakanwal was radicalized through connections in his local community and that authorities are interviewing his relatives and acquaintances.
Lakanwal came to the US as a refugee under the Biden administration's Operation Allies Welcome program to resettle Afghan refugees in America after US forces pulled out of Afghanistan and the Taliban took control of the country. "When this abandonment of Afghanistan happened, the Biden administration put people on airplanes [and] brought them to the United States without vetting them," Noem claimed. "They brought them into our country and then said they would vet them afterward."
Meanwhile, the AP looks at Lakanwal's yearslong "unraveling" in a piece that tracks his deteriorating mental health, erratic behavior, extreme isolation, inability to hold a job, and more—reporting that his actions had become so unsettling a community advocate contacted a refugee organization hoping to get him help, as the advocate was concerned Lakanwal, a father of five who had once served in a special Afghan Army unit backed by the CIA, was suicidal. NBC News reports other members of the same elite unit have also struggled as they live in a "legal limbo" in the US awaiting work permits and finding it difficult to stay afloat.
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