type: timeline_event
On November 26, 2025, at approximately 2:15 p.m., two West Virginia National Guard members were shot in an ambush-style attack near the Farragut West metro station, just two blocks from the White House. U.S. Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, from Summersville, West Virginia, and U.S. Air Force Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolfe, 24, from Martinsburg, West Virginia, were on patrol as part of the D.C. Safe and Beautiful Mission when gunman Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, came around a corner and opened fire with a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver. Both Guard members were shot in the head; Beckstrom died from her injuries on November 27, while Wolfe remained in critical but improving condition. Nearby National Guard personnel quickly subdued the shooter, who was also shot during the encounter.
The suspect, an Afghan national who worked with CIA paramilitary forces in Kandahar, entered the United States in September 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome, a refugee resettlement program for Afghans who assisted U.S. forces. After undergoing standard security vetting including fingerprinting, iris scans, and background checks, Lakanwal applied for asylum in December 2024 and was granted asylee status in April 2025 during the Trump administration. CIA Director John Ratcliffe confirmed that Lakanwal's relationship with U.S. agencies "ended shortly following" the 2021 evacuation. Evidence suggests Lakanwal's mental health deteriorated in recent years, becoming increasingly isolated from his community before driving cross-country from Washington state to conduct the attack.
Both victims had been deployed to Washington, D.C., since August 2025 as part of Trump's federal takeover of the capital. Beckstrom joined the West Virginia Army National Guard's 863rd Military Police Company in June 2023, while Wolfe entered the Air National Guard's 167th Airlift Wing Force Support Squadron in February 2019. President Trump announced Beckstrom's death during a Thanksgiving call with military members, calling the incident "an act of terror" and "a crime against our entire nation." He immediately ordered 500 additional National Guard troops to D.C., bringing total deployment to approximately 2,700 personnel. FBI Director Kash Patel announced federal prosecution as an assault on a federal officer, with D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro charging Lakanwal with first-degree murder.
The attack triggered immediate policy consequences, as the Trump administration halted all visa and immigration processing for Afghan nationals, ordered reviews of green card applications from 19 countries, and froze all pending asylum decisions. Trump announced plans to review all 76,000 Afghans admitted under Operation Allies Welcome, declaring "If they can't love our country, we don't want them." The incident became a focal point for Trump's immigration restrictions, despite resettlement advocates noting that individual cases shouldn't reflect on thousands of successfully integrated Afghan refugees. The shooting highlighted tensions between national security concerns, refugee obligations to those who served alongside U.S. forces, and the vulnerability of military personnel deployed domestically under politically charged circumstances.