Written by Marsha Blackburn
U.S. Senator
Washington, D.C. – On the day before Thanksgiving, our nation’s capital experienced a horrific tragedy: Just blocks from the White House, two National Guard members were ambushed by a gunman. One of the victims, 20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom, tragically succumbed to her wounds.
Her friend and fellow guardsman, 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe, is currently fighting for his life. In the wake of this disturbing attack, I join thousands of Americans in praying for his full recovery and in mourning the tragic loss of Ms. Beckstrom.
These two young, brave, and patriotic Americans answered the call of duty to serve their nation in uniform. For that, they were gunned down in cold blood—by someone who should have never been allowed in our country. The shooting suspect is a 29-year-old Afghan national who entered our country in 2021 during President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
He is among nearly 200,000 Afghan nationals who were relocated to our country by the Biden administration under Operation Allies Welcome as part of Biden’s broader scheme to make illegal immigration legal. At the time, my Republican colleagues and I demanded answers from the administration about how they were possibly vetting all the evacuees amid the chaotic withdrawal.
We must never forget that 13 U.S. service members—including Staff Sergeant Ryan Knauss of Tennessee—were murdered by a suicide bomber at Abbey Gate outside Kabul International Airport as order broke down during the evacuation.
The Joe Biden administration, however, insisted that the evacuees were properly vetted. The morning after the Abbey Gate bombing, Biden’s Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, told the American people that all Afghan nationals were “screened and vetted prior to being allowed into the United States.”
Months later, then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas claimed that the administration was “extraordinarily proud” of Operation Allies Welcome and insisted that authorities “conducted comprehensive security and vetting screening of the individuals who arrived here.”
That was a lie—a lie that has now cost the life of a U.S. service member.
In 2022, an inspector general report from the Department of Homeland Security found that the Biden administration “admitted or paroled evacuees who were not fully vetted into the United States,” noting that “some information used to vet evacuees through U.S. government databases … was inaccurate, incomplete, or missing.”
A follow-up report in 2024 found that the Biden administration did not establish a process for monitoring the parole status of Afghan nationals, adding that Biden administration officials “uniformly believed this was not their responsibility.”
This failure of oversight endangered the American people. Thankfully, President Donald J. Trump is taking decisive action to strengthen vetting and prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again. Following last month’s shooting, he halted visas for Afghan nationals and bolstered the vetting process for aliens from 19 high-risk countries. In the days since, federal law enforcement has also arrested on terror charges multiple Afghan nationals who were admitted into our country under Biden.
One of them was arrested by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Fort Worth, Texas, for allegedly making bomb threats, while another in Virginia was charged with providing material support to ISIS-K—the same terror group that murdered the 13 U.S. service members at Abbey Gate.
One thing should be clear: Unlike the last administration, President Trump is putting the American people first. Under Republican leadership, Congress will continue to do everything possible to work with DHS and federal law enforcement to support these efforts.
