White House border czar Tom Homan predicted Sunday that the Trump administration will likely deport the majority of migrants from “Third World” nations, citing an inability to verify their backgrounds with foreign governments.
The harsh assessment comes days after a deadly shooting at a U.S. military facility, allegedly carried out by an Afghan national, which prompted President Donald Trump to announce a “permanent pause” on migration from developing countries.
Speaking on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, Homan argued that vetting procedures are fundamentally broken when dealing with nations that lack robust record-keeping systems or hold adversarial relationships with the United States.
“These Third World nations, they don’t have systems like we do,” Homan said. He noted that many Afghan nationals arrived with no travel documents or identification, forcing U.S. officials to rely on information that simply does not exist.
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“We’re going to count on the people that run Afghanistan, the Taliban, to provide us any information [on] who the bad guys were? Certainly not,” Homan said. “I really, truly think that most of them are going to end up being deported because we’re not going to be able to properly vet them.”
The policy shift follows a shooting on Wednesday that killed West Virginia Army National Guard Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and left Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe in critical condition.
Authorities identified the suspect as Rahmanullah Lakanwal. Lakanwal reportedly shouted “Allahu akbar” before opening fire. His immigration history spans two administrations: he entered the U.S. in September 2021 under the Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome after working with U.S. agencies, including the CIA. However, Reuters reports that his asylum claim was formally granted in April 2025, during the Trump administration.
In response to the attack, President Trump took to Truth Social on Thursday to declare his administration would “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries” and move to “terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem reinforced this stance Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, asserting that the administration intends to deport individuals with pending asylum claims.
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Federal agencies are already moving to implement the new directives. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced an indefinite pause on processing immigration requests related to Afghan nationals. Additionally, the agency stated it will launch a full-scale reexamination of green cards previously granted to individuals from 19 countries deemed “of concern.”
According to USCIS, future vetting will weigh “negative, country-specific factors,” including whether a foreign government has the capability to issue secure identity documents or share data with U.S. intelligence.
“You think El Salvador or Turkey or Sudan or any of these countries have the databases or system checks that we have?” Homan asked during his Sunday interview. “There’s no way to clearly vet these people 100% that they’re safe to come to this country.”
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