GOP presses Biden administration on Afghan evacuees amid new terrorism concerns Six months after the end of the Afghan airlift, congressional Republican investigators say it’s time for the Department of Homeland Security to release details of the 76,000 Afghan evacuees who’ve been brought to the U.S. and released into communities around the country.
In a letter Friday to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee complained that they’re still being stonewalled half a year after the evacuation from Kabul in their quest to find out who was brought into the country, exactly what vetting they faced, what legal authority was used to bring each of them here, and what states they ended up in.
The lawmakers said the Biden administration’s “chaotic” withdrawal spawned numerous problems — including potential security risks from poor vetting.
“We are particularly concerned that terrorists or other bad actors may seek to take advantage of our goodwill, exploiting any weakness in border security and vetting of foreign nationals seeking to enter the United States,” the Republicans wrote in the letter, obtained first by The Washington Times.
The letter, led by Rep. James Comer, the ranking Republican on the committee, and Rep. Yvette Herrell, New Mexico Republican, comes a week after a devastating report by the Pentagon’s inspector general, who found that key Defense Department security databases weren’t checked as part of the initial vetting.
As of early November, at least 50 Afghans had been brought to the U.S. who were later found to have significant security concerns in those unchecked databases. Those included issues such as having their fingerprints found on explosives and being categorized as “known or suspected terrorists.”
A review of 31 of those Afghans who’d reached the U.S. as of Sept. 17 found that only three “could be located.”
“Not being able to locate Afghan evacuees with derogatory information quickly and accurately could pose a security risk to the United States,” the inspector general concluded.....................
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/feb/25/gop-presses-biden-administration-on-afghan-evacuee/
