The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services late on Wednesday said that it has stopped processing all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals indefinitely. (Reporting by Shivani Tanna in Bengaluru;

The agency is set to discontinue sending text alerts from the number 468-311, also known as GOV-311. Going forward, applicants are expected to receive text messages from a new number: 872466, which stands for USA-IMM, short for "U.S.A. Immigration.

An Afghan national has been accused of shooting two West Virginia National Guard members just blocks from the White House in a brazen act of violence at a time when the presence of troops in the nation’s capital and other cities around the country has become a political flashpoint.