US Politics
Trump shares post from Noem calling for a ‘full travel ban’ on unnamed countries she claims are sending ‘killers’ to the US
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DHS secretary Kristi Noem has proposed a sweeping new travel ban on “every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies” — without explaining exactly who she means or where they are from.
In a post on Elon Musk’s social network X on Monday evening, Noem said she had just met with President Donald Trump and was recommending a “full travel ban” on unspecified “foreign invaders”.
“Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat, and the unyielding love of freedom — not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits owed to AMERICANS,” Noem said.
“WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.”
The president later shared her post on his own social network Truth Social without further comment, while the official DHS X account added: “EVERY DAMN COUNTRY.”
Noem’s post appeared to be in response to last week’s “targeted” shooting of two West Virginia National Guard members in Washington, D.C., allegedly by a former CIA-backed special forces operative from Afghanistan who had been granted asylum by the Trump administration in April 2025.
Police arrested 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, originally from a village in the province of Khost in Afghanistan, in connection with the crime, and reports indicated he had served in the Afghan Army for 10 years alongside U.S. special forces.
Lakanwal was one of roughly 76,000 people who came to the U.S. under Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden-era program aimed at resettling Afghans who had helped the U.S. in its fight against the Taliban.
One childhood friend told The New York Times that Lakanwal had worked as a delivery driver to support his wife and five children, but had struggled with PTSD and often turned to marijuana to cope.
Noem said Lakanwal had been”radicalized” within the U.S. “through connections in his home community and state”, while reports indicated that he had previously served in a feared U.S.-aligned paramilitary unit often described as a “death squad”.
In the wake of the shooting, DHS imposed an unprecedented new crackdown on legal immigration: freezing all asylum decisions for claimants currently in the U.S., banning all Afghan travelers, reviewing green cards for people from 19 countries, and reviewing all asylum approvals issued under Joe Biden.
Those last two measures would threaten the immigration status of up to 1.5 million people currently seeking asylum and more than 50,000 people who were granted asylum during Biden’s term, according to The New York Time.
In another Truth Social post, Trump vowed to “permanently pause migration from all third world countries”, again without specifying which.
The same 19 countries — mostly in the Middle East and Africa, plus some Latin American countries such as Venezuela and Haiti — are already subject to a travel ban issued in June.
DHS and the White House did not immediately respond to questions from The Independent.
