An Afghan national has been charged with murder for the slaying of a member of the National Guard in Washington, D.C. Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who came to the U.S. in 2021 following the Taliban recapture of Kabul, shot 24-year-old U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe and 20-year-old National Guard Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom on Wednesday, sending both to the hospital in critical condition. Beckstrom succumbed to her wounds and died on Thursday, according to her father, who called her murder “a horrible tragedy.”

In a public address Thursday evening, President Donald Trump memorialized Beckstrom as a “highly respected, young, magnificent person” and “outstanding in every way.” He lamented, “She’s just passed away, she’s no longer with us. She’s looking down on us right now.” The president continued, “She was savagely attacked. She’s dead. She’s not with us.” Immediately following the shooting, the president declared, “This heinous assault was an act of evil and act of hatred and an act of terror. It was a crime against our entire nation. It was a crime against humanity.” Wolfe remains in critical condition.

Following Beckstrom’s death, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) upgraded the charges against Lakanwal from three counts of assault with intent to kill while armed and firearm possession during a crime of violence to murder. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced, “I will tell you right now, I will tell you early, we will do everything in our power to seek the death penalty against that monster who should not have been in our country.”

Bondi and other members of the Trump administration have been critical of former President Joe Biden’s vetting of Afghan nationals claiming refugee status following the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from the country in 2021. Referring to an Afghan national arrested in the U.S. after threatening to bomb a building in Texas, Bondi explained, “He had been here through Operation Allies Welcome program, minimal to little vetting. I was on the phone last night with Secretary Kristi Noem at length. They did not do biometrics. They did not do social media. They did very little, if minimal, vetting on all of these people”

“And now to take a step back, we have a 1.5 million backlog of people that have come into our country,” Bondi added. “These people are being radicalized. We know that this shooter who shot our National Guardsmen in D.C. the day before Thanksgiving, he was radicalized. You’re going to hear a lot more about that,” the attorney general shared. “These people should not have been in our country, should have never been in our country. Under Joe Biden, he opened our borders, of course, to MS-13, TdA members.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also faulted lax vetting under the Biden administration. “We know that this individual came into the country under Operation Allies Welcome during the Biden administration and that disastrous withdrawal that we all watched unfold in 2021. He’s been in this country and was in the Washington state area, we do know that,” Noem shared. “When this abandonment of Afghanistan happened, the Biden administration put people on airplanes, brought them to the United States without vetting them. They brought them into our country and then said they would vet them afterwards,” she continued. “A vetting process happens when the person comes into the country, and Joe Biden completely did not vet any of these individuals and not vet this individual: waited until he got into the United States, then that application for asylum was opened under the Joe Biden administration, when he was the president in the White House, and allowed that to go forward with the information that they provided.”

“That’s the Biden administration’s responsibility. This is the consequences of the dangerous situation he put our country in when he allowed those people to infiltrate our country during that abandonment of Afghanistan,” Noem reiterated. “We will never allow this to continue to happen in our country, allow individuals who came to our country that were unvetted by Joe Biden allowed to run free and loose, we are going to bring them to justice and make sure that they’re returned out of this country,” she emphasized. Referring to Lakanwal, she continued, “We’re going to use every tool at our disposal to bring him to justice and make him pay for what he has done, not just to America, but how he’s devastated these families and taken the lives, the life of one of our soldiers and devastatingly injured another one.”

According to a report from The New York Times, Lakanwal was part of a paramilitary unit working with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Afghanistan during the late stages of America’s 20-year war there. Lakanwal’s paramilitary force, known as a “Zero Unit,” was trained by the CIA and was reportedly extremely violent, being labeled a “death squad” due to the acts of brutality committed. The Biden administration ensured that members of the “Zero Units” were relocated to the U.S. following the U.S. withdrawal. According to Lakwanal’s friends in Afghanistan, he suffered from “mental health” issues and was embittered against the CIA over the acts of violence he committed in his home country. Current CIA Director John Ratcliffe charged that Lakanwal “should have never been allowed to come here.”

The Associated Press reported that Lakanwal struggled to adjust to life in the U.S. and did not assimilate to U.S. society, failing to hold a steady job or commit to his English language courses. An unnamed individual who worked with resettling Afghan nationals labeled as refugees sent emails to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a nonprofit group working with refugees, raising concerns over Lakanwal’s behavior. “Rahmanullah has not been functional as a person, father and provider since March of last year, 03/2023. He quit his job that month, and his behavior has changed greatly,” the individual wrote. Lakanwal fluctuated between “periods of dark isolation and reckless travel,” sometimes spending weeks in a “darkened room, not speaking to anyone, not even his wife or older kids,” and sometimes disappearing on days-long cross-country road trips, despite facing eviction after months of failing to pay rent. U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro reported that Lakanwal had driven from Bellingham, Washington, on the West Coast, to the nation’s capital — a trip of nearly 2,900 miles — immediately prior to shooting Beckstrom and Wolfe.

The Department of Homeland Security published a list Saturday of Aghan nationals brought into the U.S. under the Biden administration who “have hurt and terrorized Americans after the Biden administration flooded our communities with criminals, terrorists, and other threats. These are just a few of the criminals who have rewarded American generosity with violence…” The list included an Afghan national who shot two police officers in Virginia and said that he “should have served with the f***ing Taliban,” a pair of Afghan nationals who had subsequently “pledged their allegiance” to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and plotted a terrorist attack in Oklahoma, an Afghan national arrested for the attempted sexual assault of a child in Wisconsin, and another Afghan national charged with the attempted rape of a teenage girl in Montana. “These are just a few of the criminals who were said to be ‘fully vetted’ by the Biden administration. Americans do not have to suffer violence from people who should not be here at all,” DHS said in a social media post. “WE WILL SEND THEM BACK.”

Following the shooting of the two National Guard members, the U.S. State Department announced that it “has IMMEDIATELY paused visa issuance for individuals traveling on Afghan passports.” The agency added, “The Department is taking all necessary steps to protect U.S. national security and public safety.”