After National Guard shooting, administration cracks down on legal immigration

WASHINGTON— Sophia Nyazi’s husband, Milad, shook her awake at 8 a.m. and told her, “ICE is here.”

On Tuesday, three uniformed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were downstairs at the family’s Long Island, New York, home, according to video taken from the top of the staircase reviewed by The Times.

Nyazi said the agents asked if her husband had applied for a green card. They told him they would have to arrest him because of the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., a week earlier.

“He had nothing to do with that attack,” Nyazi, 27, recalled responding. “We don’t even know that person.”

Their protests were of no consequence. The Trump administration has implemented a broad and unprecedented series of policy changes aimed at significantly limiting legal immigration pathways, including for immigrants long considered the most vulnerable.

Milad Nyazi, 28, was detained because he was from Afghanistan, like the man accused in the shooting that killed a National Guard member.

The administration has paused decisions on all applications filed with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) by people seeking asylum. Visa and immigration applications of Afghans, who were welcomed by the USA when withdrawing all its soldiers from the country in 2021, were stopped.

Officials also have frozen processing of immigration cases for people from 19 countries the administration considers “high risk” and will conduct case-by-case reviews of green cards and other immigration benefits granted to people from those countries since former President Biden took office in 2021.

Immigration lawyers say they have learned that dozens of naturalization ceremonies and green card interviews have been canceled for immigrants from Haiti, Iran, Guinea and other countries on the list.

Gregory Chen, director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Assn., said that in several cases, immigration officials told immigrants they were ready to issue green cards but were unable to do so because of the new guidance.

While it’s unclear exactly how many people will be affected by the new rules, 1.5 million immigrants have asylum cases pending with USCIS.

“These are sweeping changes that impose mass punishment on a broad swath of people who are trying to do things the right way,” said Amanda Baran, former chief of policy and strategy at USCIS under the Biden administration. “I’m worried about all the people who have applied in the line of duty and whose lives are now on hold.”

Administration officials described the November 26 attack as a “terrorist attack” and argued that the changes were necessary to protect the country. Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, faces charges stemming from the shooting that killed Army Spc. 20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom and critically injured Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24.

“The protection of this country and the American people remains paramount, and the American people will not bear the cost of the previous administration’s reckless resettlement policies,” USCIS director Joseph Edlow said in a message. Published on X on November 27. “American security is non-negotiable.”

Lakanwal He did not admit his guilt He was arrested last week and his motive is still under investigation. He served in a CIA-run counterterrorism unit in Afghanistan.

Officials said Lakanwal entered the United States in 2021 through the Biden administration program that resettled nearly 200,000 Afghans after the U.S. withdrawal. According to the statement of the non-profit organization #AfghanEvac, he applied for asylum in December 2024 and this application was approved by the Trump administration in April.

It was believed that Afghans working with US troops would face danger if left to the Taliban-run government. At the time, the Department of Homeland Security said that in addition to undergoing routine security screening, they were subjected to additional “rigorous” review by counterterrorism and intelligence experts, including biometric and biographical checks.

Two federal reports He cited some failures in screening from 2024 and this year, including data inaccuracies and the presence of 55 evacuees later identified on terrorism watch lists; however, the second report stated that the FBI subsequently followed all necessary processes to mitigate any potential threat.

It’s unclear exactly how the administration will conduct investigations into the thousands of people currently living legally in the United States. The federal government cannot easily remove people from permanent legal status. But the threat of reopening cases has sparked alarm in immigrant communities across the country.

By 2023, approximately 58,600 Afghan immigrants call California home; This number is much higher than any other state. According to the Migration Policy Institute. Interviews with a dozen local community advocates, immigration attorneys and family members of detainees reveal an aggressive effort by the federal government to recruit new Afghan immigrants in the wake of the D.C. shooting.

“I think, unfortunately, the administration has taken this very tragic event and politicized it as a way to stop even legal immigration. And it’s certainly spread much broader than Afghan society,” said Sharvari Dalal-Dheini, director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Assn.

Trump administration officials cited the attack as an example in a series of policy changes last week.

On Friday, USCIS announced that established a new center Strengthening screening with additional reviews of immigration applications, in part using artificial intelligence. The USCIS Inspection Center, headquartered in Atlanta, will “centralize advanced examination of aliens and enable the agency to respond more nimbly to changes in the evolving threat landscape,” the agency said.

on thursdayUSCIS said work permits issued to immigrants will expire in 18 months, not five years. The change includes work permits for people who are accepted as refugees, whose green card applications are pending, and whose asylum applications are pending.

In a memorandum on Tuesday It also outlines the halt in asylum applications and the migration of people from 19 countries subject to travel banUSCIS acknowledged that the changes could result in processing delays but determined that they were “necessary and appropriate” when weighed against “the agency’s obligation to protect and preserve national security.”

Immigrants were already on high alert as the Trump administration canceled temporary humanitarian aid programs, cut refugee admissions except for a limited number of white South African Afrikaners, and stepped up attempts to send those with deportation orders to countries with which they had no personal connections.

Before the shooting in Washington, 21 November note showed that the administration plans to review the cases of more than 200,000 refugees admitted under the Biden administration. Although asylum seekers apply after arriving in the United States, refugees apply for admission to the United States. out of country.

Nyazi questioned why Afghans were excluded and noted that a white person allegedly assassinated Charlie Kirk, but “I don’t see any ICE agents going into white people’s homes.”

When asked why Milad Nyazi was detained, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of public affairs for Homeland Security, said Milad Nyazi was guilty, citing two arrests on suspicion of domestic violence.

“Undersecretary [Kristi] Noem, DHS is working full force to identify and apprehend known or suspected terrorists and criminal illegal aliens coming through Biden’s fraudulent parole programs, and to work to remove criminals and public safety threats from our country,” McLaughlin said.

Nyazi said the charges, which did not stem from physical violence, were dropped and his record was later expunged.

She and her husband got engaged in Afghanistan in 2019, and since Nyazi is a U.S. citizen, she applied for a fiancée visa. Their applications were approved in 2021. Shortly thereafter, with the Taliban taking control in full force, the US government allowed Milad Nyazi to fly to the US. Nyazi said there is a pending green card application.

On Tuesday, the couple’s 3-year-old daughter screamed and cried as her father was handcuffed and taken away. He has a hearing this week.

Zahra Billoo, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and others say Afghans in various stages of their legal immigration process are being targeted, not just those who have received deportation orders. He said at least 17 Afghans have been detained in the Bay Area since Monday.

Most of the Afghans detained last week had arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum, lawyers said.

Paris Etemadi Scott, legal director of the Pars Equality Center in San José, said three of her clients, an Afghan mother and her two sons, both in their early 20s, were detained during a routine check-in with ICE on Dec. 1. All of them had pending asylum applications, he said.

Rebecca Olszewski, managing attorney for the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, said her Afghan client, who had a pending asylum case, reported for his monthly virtual check-in on Friday and was told to appear in person at the location of his detention the next day.

Since the shooting, administration officials and the president have used dehumanizing language to describe immigrants. While Noem announced the travel ban on 19 countries on December 1, she shared in

At a Cabinet meeting the next day, Trump referred to Somali immigrants as “trash” who “contributed nothing.” (A few days later, Noem said the administration would expand the travel ban to more than 30 countries.)

On Thanksgiving, Trump said: he said its social media platform He said he planned to “permanently stop immigration from all Third World Countries” and deport those “who do not conform to Western Civilization.”

In North Sacramento, where the Afghan population is particularly dense, there has been a ghostly silence in Shafiullah Hotak’s regular haunts lately. Hotak, 38, is an Afghan immigrant who served as a program manager for refugee resettlement organization Lao Family Community Development until he became unemployed in May due to federal cutbacks.

On Thursday, immigration officers knocked on the doors of an apartment complex on Marconi Boulevard where hundreds of Afghans have resettled. An Afghan-owned tax and accounting business that was usually crowded with clients had just one employee. A nearby park was empty, where teenagers played around soccer balls and giggling children wandered around after school. The queues at the halal market, known for its sesame Afghan bread, had also disappeared.

“The situation in our society reminds me of when we went to work in Afghanistan,” Hotak said. “We had to use different routes every day because people opposed to the US mission in Afghanistan were targeting people. There were bombings and shootings.”

Hotak said U.S. enemies in Afghanistan advise “Kill the eyes” on how to deal with local Afghans who aid the military in blinding its operations.

“But these days, these ‘eyes’ are on the United States, and the US government is looking for ways to take them and put them in prison,” Hotak said.

Times Staff writers Castillo reported from Washington, while Hussain and Uranga reported from Los Angeles.