How nationality-based enforcement after the National Guard shooting weakens U.S. security.
.jpg?sfvrsn=60176b62_5 "The Strategic Cost of Collective Punishment")
On Jan. 26, the Heritage Foundation released a report arguing that the relocation of Afghan allies after 2021 “failed the national security test,” citing the Nov. 26, 2025, shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., allegedly by an Afghan national as evidence of a systemic vetting failure. The report called for sweeping restrictions on Afghan admissions and a broad re-review of Afghans who entered since 2021, including parolees and people with pending asylum, permanent resident, or citizenship applications, with removal proceedings initiated where Heritage argued ineligibilities exist.
That claim reflects a broader assumption now shaping U.S. policy that collective enforcement measures enhance security, and that individual acts of violence justify suspicion based solely on belonging to a broader group. That framework misunderstands how security actually works. The real test is not whether violence can be prevented with absolute certainty, an impossible standard that no vetting system, foreign or domestic, can meet. The test is whether U.S. responses to such incidents strengthen or weaken the strategic systems the country relies on for intelligence, operations, and credibility. By that measure, the current reaction undermines U.S. security. Its breadth and indiscriminate application divert resources to low-risk cases, erode civil rights and community trust in the systems, and risk weakening intelligence and information sharing agreements with partners abroad.
Since the November shooting, immigration enforcement actions targeting Afghan nationals have intensified, including against individuals with pending applications, scheduled court hearings, or approved Special Immigrant Visas. Afghan families are being called into routine Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) check-ins without knowing whether they will be allowed to return home or placed into detention. Others were arrested after leaving their homes, places of worship, or work.
In one case, a former Tajik civil servant who fled after the Taliban takeover was arrested after receiving a text message instructing him to report to the Manhattan Intensive Supervision Appearance Program office. He left after an hour, but then received a second message to appear at an ICE office, where he was handcuffed, detained, and transferred to a long-term detention facility in New Jersey. In this case, as in many others flagged by legal advocates, the individual had no alleged ties to last November’s shooting. Examples have been reported, from New York to the Midwest to Northern California, of Afghans—many with legal status or in the process of applying—being detained by ICE. These actions reflect the translation of collective suspicion into enforcement practice.
Why Collective Punishment Fails as Security Policy
Treating nationality as a proxy for security threats leads policymakers to design enforcement systems that prioritize speed and volume over precision. Collective punishment, whether through nationality-based enforcement, mass processing freezes, or indiscriminate detention, does not reduce risk. Instead, it erodes public trust, diverts resources, and ultimately makes the United States less secure.
The consequences are visible in how these policies are being implemented. Afghans detained at routine ICE check-ins are getting caught in the same fast-tracked deportation proceedings that the Trump administration began implementing in spring 2025. Our former partners are being placed into expedited removal or fast-tracked immigration court dockets, transferred to detention facilities far from their homes, and often left with limited access to legal counsel. Often this means that individuals are not given a meaningful opportunity to present evidence of prior vetting or pending applications, either because they are not allowed an immigration court hearing (under expedited removal) or they are scheduled so quickly that they do not have time to gather and submit evidence while in detention with little access to the outside world.
From a national security perspective, this approach does exactly what effective risk management seeks to avoid. It overwhelms the system with low-risk cases, obscures genuine threat indicators, and alienates communities whose cooperation is essential to identifying actual dangers. Security systems function best when they are selective, evidence driven, and capable of distinguishing signal from noise. Collective enforcement produces the opposite result.
The Vetting Debate Is Misframed
What makes the current response especially striking is that many of those now facing detention or removal are among the most thoroughly vetted people in the United States. Afghans evacuated in 2021 underwent multiple rounds of biometric, biographic, and intelligence screening before departure, upon arrival, and again when applying for immigration benefits. Those who worked directly with U.S. forces were subject to additional, recurring background checks as part of the Special Immigrant Visa process. This scrutiny often spanned years.
Notably, the most concrete oversight findings cited in recent hearings and reports focus on post-arrival case management and tracking capacity, not on failures to identify violent intent during the vetting process itself. That distinction matters. A breakdown in administrative follow-up is not the same as a failure of security screening, yet the two are often conflated in public debate. Notably, while the Heritage report mentions the same June 2025 FBI Office of the Inspector General (OIG) findings, it highlights the language about the heightened risk during the evacuation itself while disregarding its ultimate findings that the screening and vetting processes functioned as intended. In fact, the OIG report concludes that in regards to a specific subset of evacuees that were later found, through additional vetting of Afghans who entered the U.S. through Operation Allies Refuge and Operation Allies Welcome, to be on terrorist watchlists, “in each instance we found that the FBI’s screening, vetting, investigative, and continuous identity discovery efforts revealed potential threats that existed and appropriate mitigation steps were taken in response to those threats.”
When violence occurs despite extensive vetting, the appropriate security response is not to cast a wider net, but to identify what specific failure occurred and how to detect it next time. Calls for “better vetting” that do not specify what information was missed, how it could have been obtained, or how future screening should differ do not craft a security strategy. They detract from the goal of identifying real, workable solutions.
National security vetting is a risk reduction tool, not a predictive guarantee. No screening system, whether for refugees, visa applicants, security clearances, or gun purchases, can predict future behavior with perfect accuracy. Treating a single act of violence as proof of a systemic failure implies a standard of perfection that no security system can meet. Applied consistently, that standard would require shutting down not only Afghan admissions but also the entire system the U.S. relies on to mitigate risk, including security checks, visa adjudications, refugee screening, and counterterrorism efforts, all of which understand that no risk can ever be eliminated fully.
The Strategic Cost: Soft Networks and Credibility
What the current debate largely ignores are the strategic costs of the responses being proposed and implemented. A 2019 Pacific Council white paper describes “soft networks” as the local nationals who work with U.S. military, diplomatic, intelligence, and law enforcement missions. These individuals function as force multipliers, intelligence assets, and cultural bridges. Failing to protect them weakens operations, damages relationships, and undermines U.S. credibility.
This is not advocacy. It is an operational doctrine developed by military and intelligence professionals based on decades of field experience.
Soft networks were indispensable in Afghanistan. They enabled communication with local populations, provided early warning of threats, and offered cultural insight that technical surveillance cannot replicate. Because of their association with U.S. forces, these individuals and their families faced extraordinary risk after the U.S. withdrawal, with many forced into hiding or flight. Hundreds of U.S. veterans and civilians mobilized to assist evacuation efforts precisely because they understood the strategic consequences of the U.S.’s abandonment.
The current policy response inverts cause and effect. The failure was not the Afghan partners’ evacuation. The failure is that the U.S. now abandons them through nationality-based enforcement that signals to future partners that cooperation with the United States is disposable.
Those consequences extend far beyond Afghanistan. Future U.S. military, intelligence, and diplomatic operations will require local partners, whether in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Ukraine, Venezuela, or elsewhere. Every potential collaborator is watching how the United States treats those who previously stood alongside it. Detaining and deporting former allies en masse sends a clear message. Partnership may be praised during conflict and discarded afterward.
Intelligence and diplomacy depend on human networks. Satellites and drones cannot replace local knowledge, cultural fluency, or trust-based access. When soft networks erode, intelligence gaps widen, and the risk of misidentifying threats or missing them altogether increases.
Veterans groups and former service members with direct experience working alongside Afghan interpreters and cultural advisers have warned repeatedly of these risks. Many civilian evacuation efforts in 2021 were led by veterans who understood that abandonment would undermine future recruitment of local partners in other theaters.
A Familiar Warning: The National Security Entry-Exit Registration System
This is not the first time U.S. policy has made these mistakes. After Sept. 11, the government implemented the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, requiring noncitizens from Muslim-majority countries to register and submit to enhanced surveillance. Subsequent reviews concluded that the program generated virtually no actionable intelligence, diverted resources from targeted investigations, and damaged relationships with communities that could have been security partners. It was dismantled eventually as ineffective.
The lesson was clear. Collective suspicion weakens security. The current response follows the same pattern by treating categorical enforcement as a substitute for precision. The outcomes are likely to be the same.
What Risk-Based Security Requires
There is an alternative. Risk-based security treats protection and security as mutually reinforcing. Credibility enables cooperation. Dignity builds trust. Precision improves outcomes.
At a minimum, this requires halting nationality-based enforcement actions pending individualized assessment, ensuring meaningful due process for those detained, and stabilizing legal status for Afghan evacuees rather than leaving them in perpetual uncertainty. These are not concessions. They are prerequisites for an effective security policy.
Accountability matters as well. The shooting that prompted this response deserves a thorough investigation and targeted fixes. Blanket policies that fail to identify root causes only create new risks.
Other long-term goals for reform exist. The Special Immigrant Visa program could be strengthened and made more responsive. Durable legal pathways must replace ad hoc protections. Most importantly, protection of local partners should be integrated into military, diplomatic, and intelligence planning from the outset of future engagements, not treated as an afterthought.
The Choice in Front of Us
Much of the current debate asks whether Afghan resettlement passed a national security test. But the nationality-based enforcement response to the shooting is itself failing that test. Security is not enhanced by collective punishment, procedural shortcuts, or abandonment of local partners. It is strengthened by precision, accountability, and the credibility that future operations depend on.
The United States can still choose differently. It can prioritize individualized assessment over categorical exclusion and recognize that the most thoroughly vetted refugees in U.S. history are not the enemy. The question is whether policymakers will prioritize real security outcomes over the appearance of toughness before the damage to both Afghan communities and American operational capability becomes irreversible.
– Camille J. Mackler, Published courtesy of Lawfare.
