We cannot talk about immigration to the U.S.

Without talking about U.S. guns

Just hours before Thanksgiving, 29 year old Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal drove across the country and shot two National Guard members near the White House, killing Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and critically wounding Andrew Wolfe, 24. The shooting is now being used by the Trump administration as the reason to further escalate their war against immigrants. This includes the State Department halting asylum decisions and Trump himself announcing that they will work to “permanently pause migration from all Third World countries”. (I feel compelled to note that whatever third world means to Donald Trump it is bound to be racialized, and therefore, racist.)

To be clear, the shooting was absolutely horrific, and I condemn it in the most earnest and heartfelt of ways. Let me say unequivocally that every single person has a right to be safe from gun violence. And — because many things can be true at the same time — let me say that this response is also horrific. Collective punishment is barbaric, and to use the actions of one immigrant to assign criminality to all immigrants (something that has also been done to Black people throughout the history of this country) is both deceitful and completely racist. But for today I want to focus on the gun in this story. Because there is absolutely no way to disentangle guns from the conversation about immigration in this country. Which has been constantly on my mind since this one immigrant used a gun made right here in the United States (Massachusetts, in fact) to shoot two United States National Guard members.

First, something that is almost never addressed in the national discussion about immigration: the role U.S. made guns play in driving it. There is a beautiful and searing poem about migration by British poet Warsan Shire called Home. The poem begins with the following line:

“no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark”

That lines haunts me, especially as I know that all too often guns are the very sharp teeth of that shark’s mouth. When we talk about immigration, we have to talk about WHY people migrate to this country. So often, the answer to that question is violence, and so often it’s violence perpetrated with guns made right here in the U.S. A recent study from the University of Michigan’s Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention found that approximately 48% of immigrants reported being threatened with a firearm prior to coming to the U.S. And we know where so many of those guns are coming from: the country that is the world’s largest producer and exporter of firearms, the United States of America. More than half of “crime guns” recovered and traced in Central America originate from the United States, according to the ATF. These numbers are even higher for Mexico (70%) and across the Caribbean (around 80%).

For a deeper dive into the impact of U.S. guns as a driver of immigration to this country, I encourage you to read this piece from my friend and colleague, John Lindsay Poland. Additionally, this piece from the Conversation provides important context on how guns trafficked from the U.S. to Mexico are directly related to a significant increase in Mexico’s homicide rate.

I live in Massachusetts, and run the state coalition against gun violence here. Last year, as our shelters struggled to meet the needs of migrants coming to our state, as people hollered about immigrants ‘taking away resources’ from U.S. born folks, I just wanted to holler back with the following:

Do you understand how our guns are making this problem? Including guns made right here in Massachusetts?

Fast forward to this moment in time, immigration under Trump 2.0. Video after video show violent abductions of immigrants by masked men holding guns. Other videos show federal agents patrolling neighborhoods with guns slung over their shoulders, or pointing guns at families while they shatter car windows. We see guns pointed at immigrants and protestors alike. And we read reports on the devastating impact of the rubber bullets and so called “non lethal weapons” on the people they are deployed against.

Guns, guns, guns. The federal agents and local police officers that are terrorizing immigrants and terrifying protestors are doing so with guns at the ready or actively used. It breaks my heart to think of how many immigrants are fleeing violence at home only to be met with more violence in the country where they sought safety. Violence being used to send them back to the very place that was unsafe for them to begin with.

And U.S. guns leave a bloody trail throughout that endless cycle of violence.

This is a cycle that shows no sign of abating. Last month, Judd Legum reported in his newsletter Popular Information that ICE has boosted their spending on weapons by more than 600% compared to 2024 levels. This included just one purchase on September 29, 2025, from Geissele Automatics, which sells semi-automatic and automatic rifles, of over 9 million dollars. Nine million dollars. Can you imagine what it would look like to spend that kind of money on housing immigrants instead of weaponizing attacks on them?

More guns, more violence. This is true of the countries immigrants are fleeing from, and this is also true of the country they are feeling to. So many damn guns and so much damn trauma.

And now, people are still reeling from the shooting of two people who were serving their country. We should reel from it. No shooting is ever okay, and we should never minimize the impact of such violence. There is much to say about why the National Guard members were in DC (they should not have been) and the motivation of the shooter (which we do not know). But what is stuck in my head is the following:

U.S. made guns are driving much of the violence that causes people to flee to the U.S., to then be threatened with U.S. agents carrying U.S. made guns. And now that an immigrant has used a U.S. (Massachusetts!) made gun to harm people, the U.S. government will use that as an excuse to cause more harm to immigrants. I hate the entire equation.

I didn’t get this piece written in time to exhort you to have this conversation at your Thanksgiving tables, but we’ve got plenty more holiday gatherings to come. Please, I beg of you, when you hear people talk about immigration — especially those who rail against the immigrants that truly do make this country great — do not let the conversation pass without talking about the lethal role of OUR guns. We own this. We made the guns. We exported the guns. We then gave the guns to the people who are now using the guns to terrorize our friends and neighbors. We did this. Us. The U.S.

And please don’t let any of us forget it.