Rash: Prosecute the individual, but don’t persecute the Afghan diaspora for D.C. shootings

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Rahmanullah Lakanwal is accused of murdering Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom and critically shooting Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe last week in Washington, D.C., where both were on a National Guard deployment. If convicted, the Afghan immigrant will, and should, face the full extent of the law.

But other Afghan arrivals might, too, in a case of collective punishment that would present profound legal, ethical and geopolitical issues.

That’s because President Donald Trump has indefinitely halted immigration applications from the country and barred Afghans from entering America, regardless of risks taken for the U.S. war effort or faced if forced to remain in or return to a Taliban-led Afghanistan.

The president “starts from a position where he doesn’t feel any sense of responsibility, obligation to individuals, who had fought with and for the United States, who put their lives on the line,” said Eric Schwartz, a former dean of the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School who now chairs its global policy area.

Schwartz, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration and former president of Refugees International, added that “it’s not what we did after the end of the Vietnam War, and look how the Vietnamese community in the United States has contributed to the well-being of America, to our economy, and in so many different ways.”

Such questions may come not only from Afghans, but from those in other countries courted by the U.S. for support in conflicts. “It erodes the willingness of individuals in whatever country we are operating in to help us,” Roggio said. (But the Biden-era, chaotic Kabul withdrawal “was overall far more harmful,” stressed Roggio.)

Standing by those who stood by us in international conflicts is why there was bipartisan backing from Congress, said Schwartz, “because members of Congress realized that if you are a world power trying to make a difference in the world, you develop relationships with those who share your values and objectives. And then when things go south, you don’t leave your friends and your allies at large.”

Emigrating from Afghanistan to America “is a massive cultural shock,” said Roggio, who acknowledged that the hurried exit from a collapsing Kabul led to legitimate vetting questions. (And Lakanwal’s showed signs of “unraveling” in his adopted country, according to the New York Times.) Schwartz also recognizes that “there are going to be some people who have emotional, psychological or other problems, so there’s going to be some degree of risk, but that’s true throughout the population.” If that’s the test, he added, then it’s “not only refugee status, but we shut off immigration completely.”

That concept, of course, betrays the very idea and ideals of our nation of immigrants.

But shutting off nearly all immigration seems to be where the president’s headed. Nearly all refugee admissions — except for white South Africans — has ceased, and in social media posts Trump vowed to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries” and to take away citizenship from naturalized migrants “who undermine domestic tranquility” and even to deport foreigners “non-compatible with Western Civilization.”

Regarding immigration, like so many administration initiatives, those norms are eroded (or erased), and the effect can be literally death or depravity, the kind treated by the Minnesota-based Center for Victims of Torture.

“The shooting is a tragedy,” Yumna Rizvi, CVT’s senior policy analyst, said in a statement. “So, too, is the Trump administration’s response — a series of collective punishments for all Afghans and immigrants more broadly in the United States. CVT condemns both.”

Rizvi later added that “visas for Afghans and all asylum application decisions have been halted, and re-examinations have been requested for Afghans as well as those from the president’s list of 19 banned countries, amounting to racist and Islamophobic targeting of people who are fleeing conflict and, in many cases, torture. The people escaping these countries’ abuses must not be further restricted because of those abuses.”