The murder of National Guard soldier Sarah Beckstrom and the serious wounding of Andrew Wolfe in Washington, D.C., on November 26 is an appalling act of violence. My heart goes out to Sarah’s family, and I wish Andrew a full and speedy recovery. This crime must be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted so that the victims and survivors receive justice.
What has followed, however, is deeply troubling: a sweeping government crackdown accompanied by hostile and racist rhetoric targeting immigrants, particularly those from Afghanistan. The Trump administration has suspended all asylum processing, frozen and reexamined green card applications for people from 19 countries and reopened previously approved cases. The administration, including the President and the Secretary of Homeland Security, has called us “rapists,” “garbage,” “killers,” “leeches,” or “entitlement junkies.”
These actions and rhetoric do not serve the purpose of national security. It is a collective punishment.
As an immigrant, on this International Migrants Day, I see this as a retreat from the core constitutional principle of due process to which everyone is entitled under the rule of law.
I say this not as an abstraction. I was forced to flee Afghanistan when the Taliban took over in August 2021 following a U.S.-brokered deal that completely excluded the people of Afghanistan from the table, particularly women. We warned, we protested, yet the Taliban returned, aided by the political decisions made under the Trump administration and carried out under the former Biden administration. I had to escape to preserve my life and dignity.
Under Taliban rule, simply being a woman is criminalized: women and girls are banned from school and work. We cannot be outside unsupervised, nor can we speak in public. The systematic oppression of women is at the heart of the Taliban’s ideology and system of governance, with nearly every human right stripped away or heavily restricted, a situation that women of Afghanistan call gender apartheid.
Women resisting are met with arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, and torture, and in some cases disappearance and death. And forcing people to return, particularly women, to Afghanistan is a death sentence.
In response, I work tirelessly to ensure that human rights are central to U.S. foreign policy on Afghanistan. I do this because I believe in the power of law, using public laws like the Women, Peace, and Security Act to engage with Congress and the administration daily. I do it because of the situation in Afghanistan, but also because I believe in this country’s promise: a place that respects dignity, upholds the rule of law, and protects human rights.
So when I hear officials equate people like me to parasites, criminals, or waste, it feels like an attack on the very dignity I sought refuge in. It ignores the fact that migrants and refugees include families, students, workers, and people who have survived extreme forms of violence. It exposes children to bullying, adults to discrimination, and entire communities to suspicion. It normalizes xenophobia and shrinks the public’s capacity for empathy. A society that accepts the dehumanization of others erodes its own moral integrity.
You should prosecute the person who pulled the trigger, not an entire nationality, religion, or refugee population.
Asylum law is explicitly built on individualized assessments of a refugee’s credibility, fear, and risk of persecution. In my own immigration process, I underwent extensive security screening, biometrics, counterterrorism vetting, interviews, and multiple layers of reviews. To retroactively cast suspicion on entire communities without individualized evidence contradicts basic principles of administrative law and due process. Sweeping restrictions are not legal or security measures; they are political reactions.
No statute allows the government to shut down an entire humanitarian protection system because of one person’s actions. If a U.S. citizen commits a violent crime, the rights of all Americans are not suspended. The same principle must apply to those seeking refuge here.
The United States possesses every tool necessary to safeguard public safety without sacrificing the rule of law or eroding human rights. The issue has never been the government’s ability to respond to crime; it unquestionably can. The real test is whether it can do so while honoring the constitutional principles and due-process protections that bind state power, protect individual liberty, and ensure that every person is treated with dignity under a system of laws.
One person committed a crime. The rule of law requires that person, and only that person, be held accountable. Their actions are theirs alone. Their wrongdoing cannot be used to impose collective punishment or politically target an entire community.
I escaped gender apartheid: a system designed to strip women of all dignity, rights, and personhood. I came here because I believed that dignity and justice were non-negotiable. I now call on the United States to deliver on these values and laws, to stand up for our community and our rights.