Trump Rails Against Somali Immigrants After Afghan National Arrested in D.C. Shooting: ‘Ripping off Our Country’
President Donald Trump slammed Somali immigrants in a video address on Wednesday night after two National Guard members were allegedly shot by an Afghan national in Washington, D.C. hours earlier.
The Guard members are reportedly in critical condition.
Officials have identified the suspect as 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who is believed to have entered the country legally in 2021 during the Biden administration under its Operation Allies Welcome initiative, which resettled Afghans who assisted the U.S. in its occupation of their country. Lakanwal was shot by law enforcement and was taken to a local hospital. According to CNN, Lakanwal applied for asylum in December 2024, and the application was granted by the Trump administration in April.
In his remarks from Mar-a-Lago, the president noted that the suspect came from the “hellhole” of Afghanistan. But he also went out of his way to attack former President Joe Biden and Somali immigrants in the U.S.:
[Lakanwal] was flown in by the Biden administration in September 2021 on those infamous flights that everybody was talking about. Nobody knew who was coming in. Nobody knew anything about it. His status was extended under legislation signed by President Biden, a disastrous president, the worst in the history of our country.
This attack underscores the single greatest national security threat facing our nation. The last administration let in 20 million unknown and unvetted foreigners from all over the world, from places that you don’t want to even know about. No country can tolerate such a risk to our very survival.
An example is Minnesota, where hundreds of thousands of Somalians are ripping off our country and ripping apart that once great state. Billions of dollars are lost and gangs of Somalians come from a country that doesn’t even have a government. No laws, no water, no military, no nothing, as their representatives in our country preach to us about our Constitution and how our country is no good. We’re not going to put up with these kind of assaults on law and order by people who shouldn’t even be in our country.
We must now reexamine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden. And we must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here, or add benefit to our country. If they can’t love our country, we don’t want ’em.
Trump’s talk of Somali “representatives in our country” who say “our country is no good” was almost certainly in part a reference to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who was born in Somalia and was elected to Congress in 2018. She has been a frequent target of Trump and Republicans.
Watch above via CNN.
