The Trump administration has halted all asylum decisions following the shooting of two National Guard soldiers in Washington DC, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) director has said.
Joseph Edlow said the pause would be in place “until we can ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible”.
It came hours after US President Donald Trump pledged to “permanently pause migration” from all “third world countries”.
The flurry of immigration decisions come in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting, which left one soldier dead and another in a critical condition, and which officials have accused an Afghan national for perpetrating.
While the first of these specifically targeted Afghans seeking to enter the US, other decisions have been far more wide-reaching.
The USCIS – a branch of the Department of Homeland Security – has been told not to approve, deny or close asylum applications it receives for all nationalities, according CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.
Its officers can continue to work on asylum applications and review cases up to the point of making a decision, CBS reported.
But few details are known about Friday’s directive.
Trump did not name which countries might be affected by his migration pause, which could face legal challenges and has already prompted pushback from UN agencies.
The US president’s recent announcements represent a further toughening of his stance towards migrants during his second presidency.
Trump has also sought to enact mass deportations of illegal migrants, cut the annual number of refugee admissions, and to end automatic citizenship rights currently applicable to many born on US territory.
Following Wednesday’s fatal attack, the Trump administration temporarily stopped issuing visas to Afghans through the same programme the shooting suspect had, before suspending all immigration requests from Afghans pending a review.
Then on Thursday, the USCIS said it would re-examine green cards issued to individuals who had migrated to the US from 19 countries, without mentioning Wednesday’s attack.
The agency referred to a June proclamation that included Afghanistan, Cuba, Haiti, Iran, Somalia and Venezuela. Details on what re-examination would look like were not provided.
Trump then pledged to “end all federal benefits and subsidies to non-citizens” on Thursday.
‘Third-world countries’
Trump blamed refugees for causing the “social dysfunction in America” and vowed to remove “anyone who is not a net asset” to the US.
“Hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia were completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota,” he said.
“I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover.”
The phrase “third world” is one previously used to describe poorer, developing nations.
Earlier this year, a travel ban was imposed on nationals primarily from 11 African and Asian nations, including Afghanistan. During Trump’s first term, he enacted a travel ban targeting multiple Muslim-majority countries.
The UN has urged the US to observe international agreements on asylum seekers, news agency Reuters reported.
Trump’s reaction to the shooting amounted to a “scapegoating” of migrants in the US, argued Jeremy McKinney, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
He told the BBC World Service’s Newsday before Trump’s latest remarks that the attacker’s motive were unclear, and that radicalisation and mental illness could affect anyone.
“These types of issues – they don’t know skin colour, they don’t know nationality.”