Trump Halts Asylum and Scrutinizes Green Cards After DC Shooting, Targets Nineteen Countries

Donald Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration after a Washington shooting portends a new era of restriction—one with acute consequences for New York City’s economy, social fabric, and global standing.

When a single gunshot echoes through the capital, its reverberations are often felt most keenly in New York. So it is once again: following the fatal shooting of a National Guard officer in Washington, D.C. by a recently arrived Afghan migrant, President Trump has enacted the most sweeping federal curbs on immigration since the nativist surges of the early twentieth century. The president’s response was as predictable as it was swift—a volley of executive orders whose effects are likely to be most acute in cities built on immigration, none more so than Gotham.

The measures, unveiled over the weekend, halt new asylum claims, trigger mass reviews of “green card” holders from 19 “countries of concern,” and restrict fiscal benefits and travel for many. They reach well beyond the perpetrator’s home country. In a statement delivered first on Truth Social, Trump declared his intention to “pause migration from all third world countries,” vaguely and expansively defined, until “the system can recover.”

In practical terms, this means that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will cease processing asylum applications indefinitely. Nearly 1.5 million applicants, many of them living in New York, will see their cases indefinitely stalled. Joseph B. Edlow, the acting head of USCIS, rationalised the suspension as a security imperative: “We won’t move forward until we can guarantee maximum scrutiny.” The pause comes on top of an already paralysed system, where applicants have routinely waited years for resolution.

The reach of these new rules is particularly sweeping for New York. The city is home to the largest foreign-born population in America—over 3 million people, roughly 36% of its residents. Country-of-origin lists issued by the Department of Homeland Security read like a roll call of New York’s neighbourhoods: Haitians in Flatbush, Yemenis in Bay Ridge, Venezuelans from the Bronx. The list reads not merely as a security watchlist, but as a ban on much of the city itself.

Economically, the arc of these measures could scarcely be more consequential. New York’s post-pandemic recovery, tepid as it is, relies in no small part on immigrant labour and entrepreneurship. Neighbourhoods gutted by COVID have been revitalised not by Wall Street, but by small businesses run by immigrants from Haiti, Ecuador, and Bangladesh. Restrictions on basic safety nets—such as the newly slashed federal tax credits for non-citizens—will fray the safety rope that keeps low-wage families afloat, pressing them further into the city’s shadows.

The ripple effects do not stop with welfare reform. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s initiative to tighten scrutiny on cross-border remittances will hit New York’s immigrant households especially hard. In 2023, New Yorkers remitted more than $8 billion to families abroad, according to state banking data—a lifeline now subject to “suspicious activity” alerts. In a city where Venmo and Western Union are as vital as the subway, these changes bode ill.

Politically, the crackdown may rally elements of New York’s body politic. Mayor Eric Adams, grappling with a migrant shelter crisis and ballooning budget deficits, has played a delicate game of seeking more federal aid while voicing exasperation at the scale of arrivals. He now finds himself confronting a future in which immigrant inflows—and the money they inject—palpably ebb. Labour unions worry: the health care sector, propped up by green card nurses from the very countries now targeted, foresees staffing shortages and regulatory tangles.

For ordinary New Yorkers, the new regime will be felt in ways both banal and profound. The most visible may be the growing backlog and legal limbo facing friends, family members, and co-workers. Less apparent, but perhaps more significant, will be the chilling effect on new arrivals and the entrepreneurial energy they bring—the kind that opens restaurants, starts construction outfits, and fills shifts at odd hours.

A national mood darkens as global doors close

While the scale and scope of Trump’s response stand out, his logic is neither novel nor uniquely American. Restrictive migrations in the wake of perceived security threats are an old political chestnut: France after the Bataclan attacks in 2015, Britain post-Brexit, or Australia’s ongoing “stop the boats” melodrama. What distinguishes the United States, and New York especially, is its historic ability to metabolise such influxes and—eventually—flourish because of them.

Comparisons with past restrictive waves should give New Yorkers pause. The nativist quotas of the 1920s, imposed after a spate of anarchist violence, gutted the city’s growth for a generation—until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 reignited the metropolis’s population and, with it, its grand experiment in diversity. The spectre of “maximum scrutiny” recalls not security so much as sclerosis.

It is tempting—understandably so—for leaders beset by violence to turn inward. The president’s recitation of a migrant family’s hypothetical $50,000 haul in annual benefits is designed for maximum populist resonance; in reality, neither the figures nor their fiscal impact are as gargantuan as claimed. Still, governing is easier by anecdote than by actuarial table. The burden of proof that restriction yields security remains puny.

For New York, such measures will do little to resolve the city’s actual quandaries: housing, schools, and public safety are stretched not solely by migration flows but by years of neglected investment and tepid managerial ambition. Look too narrowly at recent arrivals and one risks scapegoating the city’s historic strengths.

We reckon a balance can be struck between safety and openness. Apprehending genuine threats via rigorous vetting is not an argument for pausing the bulk movement of labour, ideas, and dreams—least of all in a city where much of the plumbing, nursing, and building is done by those with foreign passports. History suggests that New York, once roused, is more adept at integration than exclusion.

For those watching closely, the real test for New York is not how to shield itself from the world, but how nimbly—and humanely—it digests inevitable shocks while continuing to grow. If the new restrictions linger, the cost will be measured not just in lost remittances or missed reunions, but in the slow sapping of New York’s most buoyant trait: its dynamism. ■