Immigrants in Whatcom County are feeling scared after federal officials responded to last week’s shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., with harsh rhetoric about those without United States citizenship — and the announcement of drastic policy changes.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national living in Bellingham, is accused of traveling to D.C. and shooting Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe. Beckstrom, 20, died on Thanksgiving, and Wolfe, 24, remains in serious condition but has shown promising signs of recovery.
The federal government has reacted to the shooting with a slew of measures restricting immigration to the United States, including stopping Afghans from receiving visas and pausing asylum decisions for all nationalities.
Gabe Harrison, a Bellingham immigration attorney, said since the attack, he’s spoken to the handful of Afghan clients he’s had in recent years.
“They’re worried that their cases are going to be jeopardized by the actions of this one person who doesn’t represent them in any way,” Harrison said. “So the general feeling is, ‘What’s going to happen to us now?’”
Norma Suarez Govea, executive director and president of the Bellingham-based Immigrant Resources and Immediate Support, said the shooting was a “horrible, horrible event.”
“I can’t imagine what the family of the young person is going through, losing a child,” she added.
Lakanwal, who was shot by another guard member and remains hospitalized, has pleaded not guilty. He had been living in Bellingham with his family after leaving Afghanistan, where he was part of a military unit backed by the CIA, in 2021.
In Bellingham, Lakanwal struggled to find work and his mental health appeared to decline, it has been widely reported.
For six months in 2022 and 2023, he worked at Northwest Health Care Linen, the Bellingham medical apparel and linen company confirmed. Lakanwal did not speak English, so most employees’ interactions with him consisted of “explaining jobs by showing,” according to a spokesperson for the company. Lakanwal had gotten the job with the help of Evergreen Goodwill, the spokesperson said. Evergreen Goodwill has historically helped connect immigrant and refugee communities to jobs; in August 2022, Goodwill hosted a job and resource fair, hoping to expand outreach.
In a statement Wednesday, the Islamic Society of Whatcom County said Lakanwal “was not an integrated part of our community.”
“Like any house of worship, our doors were open to those who wished to pray alongside us, and as such he had visited a limited number of times,” the statement read in part. “Our interaction with him was very sparse, and we are sharing everything we know.”
The society is “fully cooperating with the FBI and local authorities,” the statement continued.
“Our hearts go out to the victims, their families, and all those impacted,” the group wrote. “We condemn this act unequivocally.”
World Relief Western Washington, a refugee resettlement organization with a Whatcom County branch, said in a statement Monday it “cannot confirm whether or not we have served any specific client without permission from our federal government partners.”
“We are shocked and devastated” by the attack, the statement read in part. The organization urged “our country to recognize these evil actions as those of one person, not to unfairly judge others who happen to share those same characteristics.”
In a statement Tuesday, Dec. 2, U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Everett, expressed support for World Relief and said, in part, “Refugees and humanitarian nonprofits that support refugees should not be punished because of the actions of one violent person.”
President Donald Trump wrote in a social media post last Thursday he would “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries,” adding, “Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation.” The next day, the Department of Homeland Security called for “remigration now,” a term that has been used to refer to mass deportation of a country’s non-white population, CNN reported.
To Jeremy Dorrough, executive director of Lynden nonprofit Racial Unity Now, that kind of talk is “un-American.” Lack of support for refugees has “been a national failure for decades,” he said.
“I think people who are on the sidelines don’t realize how little we really do to help people transition to the U.S.,” Dorrough said. “We do almost nothing.”
Much of the burden of helping people in that position rests on nonprofit or state agencies, of which few specialize in refugee assistance, he said. As a result, refugees end up living in homeless shelters and waiting in food bank lines.
“It would be difficult for the most established U.S. citizen to have to start over in that way,” Dorrough said, “never mind someone fleeing a war zone.”
Govea echoed the sentiment. The majority of refugees are already traumatized, she said. In a new country, they must learn a new language, find work and even navigate a new way of buying groceries.
Afghan refugees who have come to Whatcom County in recent years have not found a large community of those who share their culture, Dorrough and Govea agreed.
“There’s a lot of isolation,” Dorrough said. “There are dozens — not hundreds, not thousands — but I would say dozens of Afghans” in Whatcom County.
In 2021, World Relief helped settle at least 31 Afghan refugees in Whatcom County after Kabul fell to the Taliban and the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, CDN previously reported. But by May 2022, 16 of those refugees had left to live in the Seattle area.
Those having difficulties adjusting may benefit from mental health services. But accessing that care can be challenging — especially for those whose native language is not English.
“We have some refugees from Spanish-speaking countries and finding therapists that speak Spanish is difficult,” Govea said. “I can’t imagine … how difficult it can be to find a therapist that speaks one of the languages from Afghanistan.”
The Trump administration’s push for tougher immigration enforcement has already left many without citizenship feeling fearful. For them, those fears have now been compounded by recent events.
Harrison, the immigration attorney, said before now he wouldn’t have thought of Afghan clients as at particular risk for enforcement. Their home country doesn’t share a border with the U.S., he pointed out, and many had already served the U.S. in some capacity in Afghanistan. The threat presented by the Taliban is well-known.
Now, he is concerned about Afghans in the U.S. being deported to a third country — and, once there, potential removal to Afghanistan. Back in their home country, some could face “death, torture, incarceration,” he said.
Sending people back to Afghanistan is “a death sentence for many people,” Dorrough said. “The Taliban has been hunting down people who cooperated with the U.S.”
The current location and status of Lakanwal’s wife and five children are unknown. His five boys were not in the apartment when the FBI executed a search warrant at the Bellingham complex, neighbors told Cascadia Daily News.
Fear of what happens next isn’t limited to Afghans, or even to refugees. One immigrant, who is not from Afghanistan, told Dorrough he has been carrying his U.S. passport everywhere he goes. Govea is worried about the impact of the shooting on all the families she works with.
“I don’t think people understand the difference between a whole bunch of different statuses,” Govea said. “To people, sometimes it’s just a brown person. Just an immigrant.”
