The Department of Homeland Security is further tightening the processing of immigration requests after two National Guard members were shot by an Afghan national.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, in a memo on Tuesday said it would pause the review of all pending green card, citizenship or asylum requests from immigrants from 19 countries listed in a previous travel ban.
President Trump announced in June the travel ban against 12 countries, and partial restrictions against another seven, after an attack with an incendiary bomb in Colorado.
The citizenship and immigration agency also plans to review and reinterview immigrants from those countries, possibly going back to 2021, amid heightened scrutiny of those who followed legal steps to seek permanent status in the US.
“The Trump Administration is doing everything possible to ensure that the individuals who become citizens are the best of the best. Citizenship is a privilege, not a right,” a DHS spokesperson told NPR in a statement. “We will not take risks when the future of our nation is at stake. The Trump Administration is reviewing all immigration benefits granted by the Biden administration to foreigners from Countries of Concern.”
The travel ban applies to citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, and additional restricted access applies to people from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. Migrants from all 19 countries are impacted by the pauses on pending requests and the review of previously approved ones.
Previous Restrictions on Refugees
Last month, USCIS, a division of DHS, had previously announced that it would review the status of all those admitted to the US as refugees under the Biden administration, essentially reopening those cases.
A separate memo sent on November 21, and reviewed by NPR, said that some people may need to be reinterviewed and could end up losing their legal refugee status.
The latest memo marks an escalation in the crackdown on immigration following the attack in Washington, D.C. Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national, was charged with first-degree murder for allegedly shooting two National Guard members near the White House shortly before Thanksgiving. He had been granted asylum earlier this year under the Trump administration, after first arriving in the US on a temporary humanitarian parole program under the Biden administration.
In an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the agency would pause processing of all asylum requests indefinitely while working through a backlog of one million cases.
Source: npr.org by Ximena Bustillo