Refugee groups worry about backlash after shooting of National Guard soldiers

People who enactment with refugees are disquieted that those who fled unsafe situations to commencement again successful America volition look backlash aft authorities accidental an Afghan nationalist changeable 2 National Guard soldiers this week.

Many Afghans surviving successful the U.S. are acrophobic to permission their houses, fearing they’ll beryllium swept up by migration officials oregon attacked with hatred speech, said Shawn VanDiver, president of the San Diego-based radical #AfghanEvac, a radical that helps resettle Afghans who assisted the U.S. during the two-decade war.

“They’re terrified. It’s insane," VanDiver told The Associated Press connected Thursday (November 27, 2025). “People are acting xenophobic due to the fact that of 1 deranged man. He doesn’t correspond each Afghans. He represents himself.”

Officials accidental Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, drove from his location successful Bellingham, Washington, to the nation's superior wherever helium changeable 2 West Virginia National Guard members deployed successful Washington, D.C. On Thursday.

Lakanwal had worked successful a peculiar CIA-backed Afghan Army portion earlier emigrating from Afghanistan, according to #AfghanEvac and 2 sources who spoke to the AP connected information of anonymity owed to the sensitivity of the situation.

He applied for asylum during the Biden medication and his asylum was approved this twelvemonth aft undergoing a thorough vetting, the radical said.

After the shooting, President Donald Trump said his medication would reappraisal everyone who entered from the state nether erstwhile President Joe Biden — a measurement his medication had been readying adjacent earlier the shooting.

Refugee groups fearfulness they'll present beryllium considered blameworthy by association.

Ambassador Ashraf Haidari, laminitis and president of Displaced International, which provides resources, advocacy and enactment to displaced radical worldwide, said determination indispensable beryllium a thorough probe and justness for those who were harmed, “but adjacent arsenic we prosecute accountability, 1 individual’s alleged actions cannot beryllium allowed to define, burden, oregon endanger full communities who had nary portion successful this tragedy.”

Matthew Soerens, a vice president with World Relief, a Christian humanitarian enactment that helps settee refugees, including Afghan nationals successful Whatcom County, Washington, said the idiosyncratic liable for the shooting should look justness nether the law.

“Regardless of the alleged perpetrator’s nationality, religion oregon circumstantial ineligible status, though," helium said, “we impulse our state to admit these evil actions arsenic those of 1 person, not to unfairly justice others who hap to stock those aforesaid characteristics.”