On Friday President Donald Trump announced his administration would pause asylum processes and stop issuing visas to Afghans in response to the shooting of two National Guardsmen, one of whom later died. It was an Afghan national, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, admitted into the United States through a Biden-era program, who allegedly shot and killed Specialist Sarah Beckstrom and critically injured Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe.
Of course, the propaganda press insisted this was an isolated tragedy and certainly not evidence of a failed system.
The New York Times’ Julian E. Barnes and Hamed Aleaziz wrote on Saturday that “Afghans Who Assisted U.S. During the War Underwent Rigorous Vetting.” ABC News’ Anna Flaherty called FBI Director Kash Patel’s recent comments that the Biden Administration did “absolutely zero vetting” of the refugees not “accurate.” It’s the same insistence CNN’s Tara Subramaniam and Holmes Lybrand made in a “fact-check” in 2021.
“Fact check: Afghans coming to US are not ‘unvetted refugees,’” the duo assured readers.
But federal investigations tell a very different story: The Biden administration did not conduct rigorous vetting, officials often lacked basic identification training, and the government was admitting persons who simply were not properly screened. Far from instilling confidence, these reports show the vetting process was so deeply flawed that it shouldn’t have even qualified as a process at all.
An October 2021 memorandum from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) details that “vetting” process by summarizing “interviews conducted by HSGAC staffers with federal agency officials tasked with screening, vetting, or processing Afghan evacuees” at several locations.
“Based on staff interviews with federal officials, it appears the standard security screening and vetting process that the U.S. Government conducts for refugee or visa applicants, which includes validating identification documents and an in-person interview by a trained official, is not being followed for Afghan evacuees,” the memorandum states.
Notably, “most of the staff processing evacuees with identification were not trained to recognize fraudulent documentation from Afghanistan.”
According to the memo, Afghans who lacked any “identification or records” were still permitted to come to the United States so long as the government didn’t already have any fingerprints or other biometric data that would indicate the individual was a known “terrorist, terrorist affiliate, or criminal.”
For Afghans who did have some type of identification, “federal officials told Committee staff the screening process did not include the validation of identification documents beyond a visual inspection.”
Federal officials further told HSGAC that Afghans were entered “into U.S. tracking systems” based on the data included in the Afghan’s identification document or, if such documents were unavailable, merely whatever data the Afghan relayed.
“Federal officials relayed that few Afghans know their birthday, which has resulted in a number of evacuees’ date of birth logged as January 1,” the investigation revealed. The memo also noted significant miscommunication issues. In one case, a “federal official who worked at the Rota lily pad site” thought security vetting occurred when refugees entered the United States, while “a federal official at the Fort Lee evacuee housing site” said vetting occurred overseas.
Further, federal officials said they were processing regular Afghans who did not work for the U.S. the same way they were processing Afghans who claimed to have worked on behalf of the country.
All of this was part of President Joe Biden’s “Operation Allies Welcome.” After the deadly Afghanistan withdrawal, the Biden administration welcomed thousands of foreigners into the country. The Department of Homeland Security inspector general later released a report in 2022 finding the agency did not properly “screen, vet, and inspect all Afghan evacuees arriving as part of Operation Allies Refuge (OAR)/Operation Allies Welcome (OAW).”
The DHS inspector general report found that “U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) did not always have critical data to properly screen, vet, or inspect the evacuees.”
We determined some information used to vet evacuees through U.S. Government databases, such as name, date of birth, identification number, and travel document data, was inaccurate, incomplete, or missing. We also determined CBP admitted or paroled evacuees who were not fully vetted into the United States.
The report concedes the government may have “paroled individuals into the United States who pose a risk to national security and the safety of local communities.”
Taken together, none of this resembles “rigorous vetting.” In fact, it barely resembles “vetting” at all.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
