The deadly shooting that claimed a West Virginia National Guardswoman has reopened a raw debate about the chaotic 2021 Kabul evacuation, the vetting failures critics say followed the Biden withdrawal, and the renewed push from conservatives — and President Trump — to reexamine green card policies for certain countries. This piece traces the suspect’s background, the warnings aired by commentators and lawmakers at the time, and why lawmakers say those early alarms mattered. It highlights how unvetted arrivals, gaps at military processing sites, and official reassurances that turned out to be weak are still a live political issue.
The suspect identified in the Washington attack, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, has been tied to Afghanistan and earlier unit service that drew scrutiny. The shooting killed Spc. Sarah Beckstrom of Nicholas County, West Virginia, and revived questions about the people moved into the United States during the hurried evacuation. Families and conservatives want answers about how someone with that background could end up here and on American soil near our servicemembers.
President Trump has called for renewed screening of green card holders from “countries of concern” including Afghanistan, and his demand tapped into warnings conservatives issued during the evacuation. Fox News host Laura Ingraham had flagged the administration’s approach, warning they were vetting evacuees on the “back end.” That phrase stuck because it captured a policy that prioritized speed over complete identity checks.
Ingraham pushed the point hard then and keeps it central now. “Soon after the removed it was obvious that their intent was to bring as many Afghans into the U.S. as possible,” Ingraham wrote in an email Friday. “Conservatives, including myself, raised serious concerns about the cost, the difficulty of assimilation and potential threats posed to no avail,” she said. “But we promised,” became a frequent line she used to call out the administration’s reasoning.
Back in September 2021 her reporting highlighted chaos at bases housing evacuees and raised alarm about process and oversight. Then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters the department sought to “get as many people out as fast as we can, while we had the airport functioning. We focused on doing just that, and we’re doing accountings on the back end as people arrive in the United States.” Ingraham responded bluntly: “That’s your Secretary of State admitting that he didn’t care about vetting these folks before we brought them to U.S. Soil.”
One lawmaker put those concerns into a formal letter, noting what he was hearing from an installation in Virginia. “I’ve recently been made aware from someone at Fort Pickett, Virginia, that Afghan evacuees basically have free rein of the complex and have even been allowed to leave, despite not having completed the vetting process,” Rep. Mark Green wrote. He also relayed grisly accounts from sources: “My sources made shocking allegations, including multiple incidents of sexual assault and several evacuees have been picked up by Uber drivers without any permission from authorities or being cleared to leave.”
Green’s complaints extended to how agencies coordinated, or failed to, during the crisis. “DOD is getting its directions on how to handle these situations by the State Department,” Green claimed. “And the State Department is failing to give them adequate information. They’re letting them leave. They can catch an Uber and actually leave the base. They don’t know exactly how many are even there.” The risk, in his telling, was clear and avoidable when agency messaging was muddled.
Those local reports included disturbing details beyond administrative headaches. “Then you get the shocking allegations of harassment and sexual assault, and it’s just horrific,” he said. Ingraham and others also pointed out many evacuees arrived without standard identity documents, making real vetting nearly impossible in the compressed evacuation window.
Administration officials pushed back then and said the scale required rapid action. Alejandro Mayorkas told CBS News the department was dealing with “very few” evacuees who had given “any cause for concern.” When CBS’s Norah O’Donnell pressed whether “thousands” of prisoners released by the Taliban could end up in the U.S., Mayorkas answered, “I can guarantee you that we are doing everything possible to make sure that they don’t,” Mayorkas said.
The debate did not vanish after the evacuation; it migrated to bases across the country and into congressional oversight. Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wis., reported similar issues at Fort McCoy and framed the problem as part of a broader pattern of being misled by administration claims. “Should it be any surprise to the American people that they were misled? This is no different than the Southern border when Secretary Mayorkas came before the (House) Judiciary Committee and lied to us and said the border is secure. A year ago, President Biden said ‘inflation is transitory’. And now, a year later, we find out that they did not vet them,” Tiffany said.
“None of them had gone through the SIV (Special Immigrant Visa) process,” he said. “I asked about it. People could walk right off from the base without any authorization from the commanding officer. We sounded the warning bell on that. And now, finally, the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security is talking about this and saying this is a threat to national security and to our local communities.”
