Multiple Failures In Vetting Process Of Afghans, Says Tom Homan

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

There has been a massive failure in the vetting process that allowed Afghan nationals to enter the United States under the Biden administration, border czar Tom Homan said in a Nov. 30 interview with Fox News.

When the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, the Biden administration initiated the Operation Allies Welcome program to resettle thousands of Afghan nationals in America, which included those who worked alongside U.S. authorities in Afghanistan over the previous two decades.

“It’s the biggest national security failure in the history of the nation,“ Homan said, noting that the DHS Inspector General came out with a report at the time stating multiple failures in the vetting process.

“People need to understand, in these third-world nations, they don’t have systems like we do. So, a lot of these Afghans, who did get here to get better, they had no identification at all. Not a single travel document, not one piece of identification. And we’re going to count on the people that run Afghanistan, the Taliban, to provide us any information who the bad guys were or who the good guys are? Certainly not.”

On Nov. 26, a gunman shot two West Virginia National Guard members. One of the victims has since died, while the second remains in critical condition. The suspected shooter was identified as 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal from Afghanistan, who entered the country as part of Operation Allies Welcome. In 2022, the operation was renamed Enduring Welcome.

More than 190,000 Afghan nationals were resettled in the United States as part of the effort, according to the State Department.

A 2022 report from the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) Office of Inspector General, mentioned by Homan in the interview, said that the Biden-era DHS failed to fully vet some of the 80,000 Afghans allowed entry into the United States at the time.

An audit of 88,977 evacuee records inspected by authorities found that more than 11,000 recorded their birth date as Jan. 1. In addition, 7,800 had missing or invalid travel document numbers, the report said.

More than 36,000 records listed “facilitation document” as the travel document type, and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was unable to define what the “facilitation document” was, according to the DHS.

The Epoch Times reached out to the DHS Office of Inspector General for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari was confirmed by the Senate to his post in 2019 during the first Trump administration.

Following the attack on the two National Guard members, the State Department announced on Nov. 28 that it had “IMMEDIATELY paused visa issuance for individuals traveling on Afghan passports.”

On the same day, Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph B. Edlow said in an X post that the agency had halted all asylum decisions “until we can ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.”

President Donald Trump said the asylum restriction applies to 19 nations, which he had labeled as “countries of identified concern” via a presidential action in June. The list includes Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia, and Turkmenistan.

In the interview, Homan said approximately 10.5 million illegal immigrants had crossed into the United States under the previous administration.

This figure does not include the hundreds of thousands who came via the CHNV program and the more than 2 million known gotaways, he said.

CHNV was a Biden-era parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, while gotaways refers to illegal immigrants who evaded U.S. border patrol and law enforcement authorities after crossing the border.

Since the Afghans were allowed entry via government programs, there are at least photographs and fingerprints of some of these individuals, Homan said, adding that the government has no details on the millions of gotaways.

The current administration’s policies have ensured “the most secure border in the history of this nation,” Homan said.

“Now we know who’s coming, now we clear who’s coming. We don’t have 10,000, up to 12,000 people a day, entering this country illegally,” he added.

In a Nov. 13 statement, the CBP said the Trump administration delivered the sixth straight month of zero releases at the border in October. There were 7,899 Border Patrol apprehensions on the southwest border, approximately 95 percent lower than the monthly average of the prior administration.