The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Announces More Restrictions On Legal Immigration After DC Shooting

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

The Trump administration has announced more restrictions on the country’s refugee and asylum programs after a shooting of two National Guard members last week in Washington, D.C., allegedly by an Afghan immigrant. How do these changes advance Trump’s immigration policy agenda and his vision of what it means to be an American?This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, immigration policy correspondent Ximena Bustillo, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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she's like trying to find a higher calling but then she still wants to sort of peek in by listening to the NPR Politics Podcast and find out what the heck is going on with our politics here Serenity now hey there it's the NPR Politics Podcast I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Hima Bustillo, and I cover immigration policy.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Today on the show, the Trump administration was making big changes to legal immigration to the United States. Then an immigrant from Afghanistan, allegedly shot two members of the National Guard serving in Washington, D.C. And now the administration is doubling down. Jimena, before we get to the changes, how did the alleged shooter come to the U.S.? So the lead shooter came to the United States on a temporary parole program because he had helped the United States military, particularly the CIA abroad. And there were several programs stood up to assist particularly people from Afghanistan that helped the U.S. military and its allies. One of those programs allowed for him to come to the United States temporarily for two years. And then it was up to him to pursue further form of legal status. And this all happened as the Taliban took back control of Kabul during the early part of the Biden administration. The Trump administration then granted him asylum this past April. So is that how the process normally works for asylum seekers? It can. You know, the thing with asylum is you have to come to the country you are seeking asylum in in order to seek that asylum. So he was able to come on this temporary program that allowed him to live and work in the United States temporarily for two years.

And then he was able to apply for asylum and request asylum. Typically, the process is you come here, you apply, you go through a vetting process, eventually an interview. And that's one of the ways that you can seek asylum. Typically, you have to do it pretty quickly within a year of being in the country. In theory, you have to have a credible fear. of being in danger in your home country and helping the CIA would certainly make you a target in Afghanistan. There's even this thing called the critical fear assessment that the Department of Homeland Security officials will give people often before they're allowed to seek asylum to see if they're going to have a claim that can be meritoris in order to stand up to, you know, the very rigorous tests and complicated thing that is asylum law. So this is all very complicated. I'm hoping you can kind of walk us through it.

Has the Trump administration made changes to the asylum process since coming into office? Since day one, you know, we saw a slew of initial executive orders related to immigration. And one of those executive orders essentially shut down the ability to request asylum at the southern border of the United States, which is how a lot of people were coming through. It's not how this individual came. came through to seek asylum, but many were. We saw the closing of the CBP-1 app, which is how a lot of people were requesting those appointments to do those initial credible fear assessments

and get the applications to physically apply for asylum. Well, Hameda, you know, Trump officials seem to be talking a lot about new changes after the shooting. Did this shooting really change anything? Like, what fundamentally are they talking about doing? So right after the shooting, the administration said that they were, pausing asylum decisions and, you know, separately, visa reviews. So the visa reviews specifically for people from Afghanistan, but they did put a pause on all asylum decisions.

You know, a separate order from the State Department paused other visas and programming, specifically targeting people from Afghanistan. And then they said that there was going to be higher scrutiny on green card applications from people who come from one of 19 countries that are on a travel ban list, that includes Afghanistan. But then after people become asylees and they're a granted asylum, they typically seek green cards and even citizenship. And so we are seeing kind of a trickle-down impact on then those processes that not just those people, but all people are going through and then particularly targeting in some instances, programs that go towards people from Afghanistan, but really this also broader approach.

And I have to say, you know, it's not just for asylum seekers, you know, Jimena. There are other forms of legal migration that Trump has been targeting. Sometimes people get asylum seeking and refugees confused. How is the Trump administration changing the rules for refugees here? If you're an asylum seeker, you're in the country already. You are requesting asylum. If you're a refugee, you're still outside of the country in which you're trying to seek refuge into. They have to request to be a refugee. They go through a different. screening process with the State Department, you know, other agencies and the government are involved with vetting, with interviews. And then once the United States decides that individual person can be a refugee, then they are facilitated an entry into the United States by the government. The pause on the refugee program was like pretty much day one. Like they were really, really early on. And that created an immediate stop to a legal flow of migration. And then And since then, we have most recently seen the fiscal year 2026 numbers. The Trump administration only wants to let in 7,500 refugees in this upcoming year.

The priority his administration has said is going to be white South Africans. And then even then, before this shooting, we saw an announcement coming out of the Department of Homeland Security that they're going to actually go back and revet and even re-interview anyone. that had been brought in as a refugee during the Biden administration. All right. Well, there's a lot more to talk about. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. And we're back. And dialing back legal immigration isn't a new goal for President Trump and his administration. Domenico, I am remembering another attack, a terrible mass shooting in San Bernardino, California in 2015.

That was during the presidential campaign. and that is when then candidate Trump announced his so-called Muslim ban, shot to the top of the Republican field and never lost the lead. So how is Trump now leveraging this recent shooting to achieve his goals? Yeah, I think he's leveraging it to achieve his goals, but he's also leveraging it to fit in and shoehorn in his worldview. So anytime there's the opportunity to say, see, I told you so, about these people. There then becomes this operationalization based around Trump's culture war that he's been waging, frankly, since he became a candidate in 2015. And in this case, you know, you think about like one person that does a thing, came through this program, then they say shut

down the entire thing. That's just not the reason why this is being done from a serious policy standpoint, it's to say this now shoehorns into a previously held worldview. And there's a relatively new social media post from Secretary of Homeland Security, Christine Ome, where she says, I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that's been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies. I'm not quite sure how that would work, but President Trump seems to be endorsing this through social media. Yeah.

And she said in a very native. way, in all caps, we don't want them not one. And, you know, I think that that really underscores this culture war that Trump and a lot of the people in his administration have been waging and has been really the binding element of MAGA that is echoed all throughout conservative media. And we've seen members, you know, officials at DHS who have gone on social media to post things like we are not a nation of immigrants, we're a nation of citizens. And, you know, really emphasizing that distinction of us versus them, you know, the foreign born versus the native born, which can tie into efforts to dismantle birthright citizenship, right, that we also saw

at the start of the year, the broader questions of who is using American programs, who is living in American homes, who is working American jobs, you know, kind of like all of that rhetoric really bundles together. And this administration and particularly this president is continuing that trend of, you know, the negative stereotypes of immigrants, what they're using, what they're doing in the country, who they are, where they're coming from, and really pushing that message out. Yeah, I mean, this does make me think of a recent press release I got from the White House that had the headline.

It was about the jobs report. Jobs report shows private sector gains wage growth for American-born workers. There's a real emphasis on, look, we are creating jobs for American-born workers. people. I mean, yeah, I mean, we have seen this rhetoric grow and grow over the course of the year, right? Like, first it was we are going to deport the people who are here illegally and have committed crimes and the worst of the worst. The worst of the worst. And, you know, through policy that has expanded. And now rhetorically, that has expanded as well. You know, after the New York City mayoral race, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller made sure to tweet out the statutory. of mixed status families and also just immigrant families that live in the city. And, you know, it was kind of ominous, not much context to that ex post. But I think, you know, it again starts to grow the narrative of who we're counting as American, who we're talking about as American politically and what serves our society. Yeah, I think that broadly here, it's really about where and with whom this administration's sympathies lie. I think that this is another era. area where the Republican Party has sort of been fractured because, you know, the sort of Bush era compassionate conservatism is certainly not what we're seeing here with this administration.

I mean, I knew Republican attorneys who had big, you know, private sector jobs, but then would do work on the side pro bono for refugee work because they had, you know, a religious feeling of people who have been tortured in other countries and being able to shed that light of American patriotic. and openness and opportunity and the goals that the United States is supposed to stand for. And I think it extends beyond, you know, just people who are running from war or famine, but also that America used to embrace political dissidents because the U.S. stood for freedom to voice criticism of power, but not anymore really in a country where Trump is seeking retribution against perceived political enemies. I think that the idea of who is American, who belongs

here is very different. And it really is starting to move this to a clash of the question of kind of like political rhetorical differences, this question of who can assimilate, which we are seeing written in policy memos, and we are seen spoken by administration's officials that the country wants people that can assimilate into it very easily. And then also almost what Domenico is talking about right now, which is the practical political realities where there are members and now former members of Congress that have spoken out against this broader mass deportation policy and broader anti-immigration agenda because it just simply doesn't square up for certain sectors of the economy that do rely on immigrant labor that have grown because of growing rural

communities bolstered by immigration. And, you know, we're seeing those sides continue to struggle and push and pull. And that'll be a question probably for next year on Who wins? Like, what is the ultimate reality that the Republican Party chooses to go with? Well, and President Trump himself has even had a little bit of an internal conflict where he's like, well, we may need some H-1B visas for some people or we could make money on giving people these golden tickets to the U.S. He personally has different messages at different times. But Domenico, I do want to ask about public sentiment here. And, you know, President Trump, there is zero question. He was elected. talking about immigration, talking about these countries sending their worst people. That is a fundamental core part of his campaign message. He and his administration would argue they are

delivering on that in a big way. How is the public receiving it? Well, I think particularly when it comes to deportations, people think that the administration has gone too far. We've seen that in majorities of polling, you know, showing that they think that the administration has gone too far and how they've conducted those. Immigration has been something that was one of Trump's best issues, but we've seen that slowly decline since he got into office for the second term. There's very little polling on refugees and refugee status and whether or not people support those programs. There was one sort of major poll from a Democratic group data for progress that showed significant majorities of people, including majority of Republicans, support maintaining

a refugee program. Now, what that means, who they let in, that's very different. And then you have a news event like this happen, and that can often move public opinion. And that's part of what the administration is trying to do politically is home in on this event to be able to push that public opinion down more in their favor. Yeah, and trying to find something where they can have like sort of a more purely popular approach. Yeah, you hang your hat on it and you essentially say, See, this is it, and you can go into as much detail as you want to try to encourage people to feel differently about a program like refugees or asylum status. All right, well, we are going to leave it there for today.

I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Jimenez-Bustillo, and I cover immigration. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.