According to a devastating investigation recently completed by an Inspector General (IG) working for the United States Department of Defense, tens of thousands of random Afghan evacuees made it into the United States without being checked through all of the U.S. government’s security databases.
In another worst-fear confirmation for critics of the botched evacuation, the IG stated that after some Afghani’s names were rerun through additional federal databases, at least 50 with “potentially significant security concerns” were discovered to have made it into the United States - despite President Biden’s repeated assurances to the contrary.
To add insult to injury, in the six months since Biden’s failed withdrawal and subsequent evacuation, which left Americans and Afghan allies stranded in the country, the IG stated that the Government appears to have “lost track” of most of the unchecked and potentially dangerous Afghans.
According to The Washington Times, the Defense Dept. IG reported that it “looked at a sampling of 31 security risk evacuees identified as of Sept. 17, 2021, and found that only three could be located.” Additionally, the IG reported that tens of thousands more names still have to be checked.
The IG audit concluded:
Not being able to locate Afghan evacuees with derogatory information quickly and accurately could pose a security risk to the United States.
Apparently, according to investigators working for the Defense Dept., an essential set of DoD databases were off-limits to the team in charge of vetting for the early stages of the evacuation program. This oversight was due to agreements between foreign countries and the Pentagon. As a result, it would take several months for the vetting team to develop a workaround.
Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, stated:
I expressed concern about the administration’s lackluster efforts to screen evacuees flooding from the terrorist safe haven. According to a new report by the Pentagon watchdog, the situation is far worse than we thought.
The Washington Times adds that the Senator “said the report should put a halt to talk of speeding up citizenship or other permanent legal opportunities for the evacuees.”
The IG report also exposes another lapse in security measures dealing with in-person interviews. The simple fact is most of the Afghans brought to the United States did not have in-person interviews, which experts say are critical to weeding out suspected bad actors. Instead, evacuees were brought to third countries and subjected to checks based on biographic information they chose to share.
At the time, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, stated: “We screen and vet individuals before they board planes to travel to the United States, and that screening and vetting process is an ongoing one and multilayered.”
The new IG report proves that Mayorkas’s claim was more dubious than factual. While DHS did check the evacuees against its limited database, the department did not have access to the Defense Department’s Automated Biometric Identification System or other databases run by American intelligence agencies.
The IG report also confirms early reporting from the time, which stated that Afghan evacuees who were crammed into DoD housing on eight military bases in the U.S. were free to leave at any time they pleased. Over 1,200 Afghans disappeared into the United States within one month from the airlift without even completing the limited DHS vetting process.
According to additional reporting, the last of the 76,000 Afghan evacuees emptied out of their camps on military bases into the U.S. interior over this past weekend.
For the complete story, please visit The Washington Times.
