By Leah Douglas, Jana Winter and Ted Hesson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Investigators led by the FBI’s joint terrorism task force sought clues on Thursday to what drove an Afghan immigrant to open fire on two National Guard soldiers mere blocks from the White House in what officials called an “ambush” attack on Thanksgiving eve.
The suspect worked with “the U.S. government, including CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar,” during the U.S. war in Afghanistan, CIA Director John Ratcliffe told the New York Times and Fox News.
The two soldiers, part of a militarized law enforcement mission ordered by President Donald Trump months ago and challenged in court by Washington D.C. officials, were hospitalized and had come through surgery, Attorney General Pam Bondi said.
The suspect, who was wounded in an exchange of gunfire before he was arrested, was identified by the Department of Homeland Security as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national.
Bondi told Fox News on Thursday that the two wounded soldiers were a man and woman.
She said the U.S. government planned to bring terrorism charges against the gunman and seek a sentence of life in prison “at a minimum.”
PROCESSING OF AFGHAN IMMIGRATION REQUESTS HALTED
Trump, who was at his resort in Florida at the time of the attack, released a prerecorded video statement late on Wednesday calling the shooting “an act of evil, an act of hatred and an act of terror.” He said his administration would “re-examine” all Afghans who came to the U.S. during Joe Biden’s presidency.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency later said that it has halted processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals indefinitely, “pending further review of security and vetting protocols.”
According to the DHS, Lakanwal entered the U.S. in 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden-era program to resettle thousands of Afghans who assisted the U.S. during the Afghanistan war and feared reprisals from Taliban forces who seized control of their homeland after the U.S. withdrawal.
NBC News, citing an interview with an unnamed relative of the suspect, reported early on Thursday that Lakanwal served in the Afghan army for 10 years alongside U.S. Special Forces troops and was stationed in Kandahar for part of that time.
The relative also said Lakanwal was working for online retail giant Amazon.com the last time they spoke several months ago, according to NBC News.
The DHS did not include other details of his immigration record, but a Trump administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Lakanwal applied for asylum in December 2024 and was approved on April 23 of this year, three months after Trump took office. Lakanwal, 29, who resided in Washington state, had no known criminal history, the official said.
The shooting unfolded at midday outside a subway station in a bustling commercial area within a few blocks of the White House. Secret Service agents placed the presidential mansion under a security lockdown immediately after the shooting as a precaution.
In response to Wednesday’s shooting, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the president had asked to send another 500 National Guard troops to join the more than 2,000 Guard soldiers previously mobilized in the nation’s capital.
Vice President JD Vance, who was in Kentucky on Wednesday, said in a post on X that the shooting proved that the Trump administration’s immigration policy was justified.
“We must redouble our efforts to deport people with no right to be in our country,” he said.
Critics of the Trump administration’s immigration policy say it has employed illegally harsh tactics and swept up immigrants indiscriminately, including some with no criminal history and others in the United States legally.
ATTACK OUTSIDE SUBWAY STATION
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has clashed openly with Trump over the deployment of Guard troops in her city, told reporters hours after the incident, “this is a targeted shooting.”
At the same news briefing, Jeff Carroll, executive assistant chief of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department, said the two Guard soldiers were “ambushed” and that the known assailant appeared to have acted alone.
The two soldiers, members of the West Virginia National Guard, were on a “high-visibility patrol” outside the entrance to a subway station when the suspect “came around the corner,” drew a weapon and immediately fired at the pair, Carroll said.
After an exchange of gunfire, other National Guard troops subdued the suspect, he said.
Trump said in August he was ordering the National Guard deployment to fight crime in a city he said had become unsafe, despite objections from District of Columbia officials who challenged the move in court as an infringement on local government control.
(Reporting by Leah Douglas, Jana Winter and Phil Stewart; Additional reporting by Idrees Ali, Jeff Mason, Steve Gorman, Jasper Ward, Kanishka Singh, Ted Hesson and David Morgan; Writing by Steve Gorman and Joseph Ax; Editing by Paul Thomasch, Stephen Coates and Ross Colvin)
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