Heightened security was anticipated for the showcase Thanksgiving parades across the United States after Wednesday afternoon’s shooting of two members of the National Guard as they stood on patrol just a short walk from the White House.
Both men were part of the West Virginia National Guard and, as of Wednesday night, remained in critical condition in separate city hospitals.
The lone gunman was identified and revealed to be a 29-year-old Afghanistan man, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who had travelled to the city from Washington state. He has been living in the United States since 2021.
Speaking in a video address from Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday night, president Donald Trump linked the shootings with the administration’s ongoing immigration operation and once again castigated the open border policy of his predecessor.
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Confirming the nationality of the suspected assailant, he described Afghanistan as “a hellhole on Earth”.
“He was flown in by the Biden administration in September 2021 on those infamous flights that everyone 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.”
The shocking nature of the attack, at a busy intersection near Farragut Square in Washington, DC, underlined the prevailing tension over one of the most contentious aspects of the Trump administration: the intent to deploy the National Guard to US cities that the government deem to be crime hazards.
On Wednesday afternoon, Trump had responded to the initial reports of the shooting by stating, on Truth Social, that “the animal” responsible for the attack “is also severely wounded but regardless will pay a very steep price” and then ordered an additional 500 troops to be deployed to the city.
“This happened just steps away from the White House,” the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, later said.
“It will not stand. And that’s why president Trump has asked me, and I will ask the secretary of the army to the National Guard, to add 500 additional troops, national guardsmen, to Washington, DC.”
The arrival of 2,000 troops to Washington in August was interpreted as a litmus test of an experiment that was easier to conduct in the DC area, as it does not have full statehood rights. Trump has frequently referred to the militarisation of Washington as having produced swift and remarkable results: at Tuesday’s ceremonial turkey pardoning, he claimed that there had been “zero” murders in the city for six months. In fact, 62 homicides have occurred in the capital since May 25th.
In the confused aftermath of Wednesday’s shootings, a statement issued by the office of the governor of West Virginia, Patrick Morrissey, reported that its two guardsmen had been killed in the attack. It was later clarified that both service members remained in critical condition.
The violence occurred in a busy commercial and cafe hub adjacent to two metro stations that on most afternoons is busy with tourists, downtown employees making their way to government offices or the plethora of lobbyist firms on K Street. Farragut Square is just a five-minute walk from the White House.
The incident was brief and violent: the assailant was reported to have turned a corner, immediately opening fire on the two uniformed guards, who were on “high visibility” duty near Farragut West metro station. After a series of gunshots, the suspect was subdued by other members of the military and is undergoing treatment in a city hospital, where he is reportedly not co-operating with investigators.
“Within a minute and a half of hearing the shots I saw a police car racing to the scene,” Ryaan Aquid, a visitor to the city, told local television on Wednesday evening.
“I hadn’t seen the shooter from the vantage point that I was in. I think I heard about a lot of resistance but by the time I got there it seemed that law enforcement had things under control. I saw police cars going left and right, a helicopter above me, five to six ambulances within two to three minutes of the shooting.”
The presence of the National Guard in and around high-footfall locations such as the National Mall and the busy metro stations such as Dupont Circle and Gallery Place has become a commonplace feature for residents and visitors to the city. Primarily young and many hundreds of miles from home, they stand out in their green camouflage uniforms, and much of their daily role involves patrolling the docile streets in the vicinity around the White House.
Although there were mute protests after their initial arrival in DC, the only previous assault had an absurd dimension, after a protesting resident threw a Subway sandwich at a uniformed guardsman, generating viral online responses, jokes and a slew of headlines, including Assault with a Deli Weapon.
But Wednesday’s shootings underline the constant threat that comes with wearing a uniform on US streets. Since August, tensions between protesters and immigration officials have escalated in Chicago while the administration’s attempts to deploy National Guard troops there, and in Portland, have been blocked by ongoing court battles.
On Wednesday night, Trump declared that illegal immigration remained “the single greatest security threat facing our nation” and intensified his threat to remove protected status from the Somali community in Minnesota where, he claimed, “hundreds of thousands of Somalians are ripping off our country and ripping apart that once great state.” He also vowed the administration “must now re-examine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden”.
Ironically the National Guard seemed set to exit Washington over the next few weeks following the order by a federal judge, Jia Cobb, to suspend its deployment, temporarily, after finding that the presence of outside troops was most likely illegal.
“At its core, Congress has given the District rights to govern itself,” she wrote in her finding.
“Those rights are infringed upon when defendants approve, in excess of their statutory authority, the deployment of National Guard troops to the District.”
The Trump administration filed an emergency motion to an appeals court to intervene in that decision in the hours after Wednesday’s brutal burst of violence, meaning hundreds more members of the National Guard could find themselves on the streets of Washington before Christmas.
