On November 29, 2025, the State Department sent a cable to every U.S. diplomatic post ordering consular officers to stop processing and refuse all visa applications from Afghan nationals — immigrant, non-immigrant, and Special Immigrant Visas — effective immediately. The cable also instructed officers to cancel any authorized-but-unprinted visas and to destroy already-printed ones, while Secretary of State Rubio publicly confirmed the halt. The directive was triggered by the November 26 shooting of two National Guard members near the White House by an Afghan national, and applied collectively to all Afghans regardless of individual circumstances or prior approval status.
On November 28, 2025, USCIS Director Joseph Edlow announced that the agency had "halted all asylum decisions" pending completion of enhanced vetting for "every alien," telling officers they could continue interviews up to the point of decision but could not approve, deny, or close any application regardless of the applicant's nationality. The operational directive—issued two days after an Afghan national shot two National Guard members near the White House—went beyond the concurrent Afghan-specific pause and froze affirmative asylum adjudication nationwide. CBS News reported the officer guidance on November 29. The pause was later formalized in USCIS Policy Memorandum PM-602-0192 (December 2, 2025) and declared unlawful by a federal court on June 5, 2026.
On November 26, 2025, USCIS announced it was immediately and indefinitely pausing processing of all immigration requests from Afghan nationals, covering asylum seekers, green-card applicants, work-permit renewals, family petitions, and Special Immigrant Visa applicants, many of whom aided U.S. forces during the war in Afghanistan. The agency imposed the halt by announcement with no rulemaking, no end date, and no individualized review, citing security-vetting concerns in the hours following an alleged shooting by an Afghan national near the White House.
White House senior counselor Peter Navarro personally asked the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital to approve a $620 million loan to Vulcan Elements, a North Carolina rare-earth-magnet startup — the only one of dozens of companies under consideration whose deal was initiated by a top White House aide. Donald Trump Jr.'s venture-capital firm had taken an undisclosed stake in Vulcan about three months before the deal was announced, and the company's valuation rose roughly tenfold afterward. The White House role was revealed by a ProPublica investigation published May 28, 2026.
