White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the pre-Thanksgiving shooting of two National Guard members in Washington shows it is “more important than ever to finish carrying out the president’s mass deportation operation.”
She said the Trump administration is “ensuring the monster responsible for this atrocity” is held accountable, and reckoning with what made the attack possible — including scrutinizing past immigration decisions involving Afghans and other migrants.
Leavitt blamed what she called Biden’s “historic failure in Afghanistan” and said it “continues to haunt this country and our men and women in uniform.”
A West Virginia National Guard member who was shot last week in a brazen daytime attack in Washington, D.C., remains in serious condition but showed positive signs by giving a thumbs-up that he could hear a nurse’s question and wiggling his toes, Gov. Patrick Morrisey said Monday.
Morrisey said the family of 24-year-old U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe has asked the public to pray for him. Another member of the West Virginia National Guard, U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, was killed in the shooting.
Beckstrom and Wolfe were shot Wednesday just blocks from the White House while deployed as part of President Trump’s crime-fighting plan that federalized D.C. police.
Investigators are working to determine a motive. Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national, is charged with one count of first-degree murder and two counts of assault in the shooting.
