DHS Mayorkas: ‘Not All’ Afghans Brought to U.S. Are Interviewed by Feds

C-SPAN
John Binder

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas confirmed on Tuesday that “not all” of the tens of thousands of Afghans brought to the United States as part of President Joe Biden’s massive resettlement operation have been interviewed by federal law enforcement officials.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Mayorkas said the roughly 70,000 Afghans brought to the U.S. by Biden since late August “have not all been given interviews” by federal law enforcement officials despite that being standard vetting protocol.

“We are not conducting in-person, refugee interviews of 100 percent individuals,” Mayorkas said.

Mayorkas also said he did not have a percentage of how many of the roughly 70,000 Afghans brought to the U.S. have been given in-person interviews, though he reiterated that only Afghans who were raised as red flags in federal law enforcement databases were given interviews for vetting.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) noted that only one of the September 11, 2001 hijackers had been given an interview by federal law enforcement officials — a discovery that was the reasoning behind the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation that all immigration admissions be required to undergo in-person interviews with federal officials.

The Afghans are initially flown into Philadelphia International Airport in Pennsylvania or Dulles International Airport in Virginia before temporarily living on various U.S. military bases while awaiting resettlement. About 53,000 Afghan refugees remain temporarily living at U.S. bases in Wisconsin, Texas, New Mexico, Indiana, New Jersey, and Virginia.

A federal official previously told lawmakers that ten refugees who arrived in the U.S. as part of the operation were later revealed to be “national security risks” and thus were taken into federal custody, where they remain.

Federal agents who worked on screening Afghans for entry to the U.S. now admit that they were not trained in identifying fraudulent visas, green cards, and passports. On a number of occasions, several Afghans reportedly traveled to the U.S. using fake passports.

Likewise, Hawley has revealed that an internal memo by an administration email at the time of the Afghanistan withdrawal showed that there were no vetting procedures for boarding Afghans onto U.S.-bound flights.

In October, a 19-year-old Afghan male brought to the U.S. by Biden was arrested in Montana after he allegedly raped an 18-year-old woman in a Missoula hotel. Those charges came after two Afghan men at Fort McCoy in Monroe County, Wisconsin, are being prosecuted for separate charges of domestic abuse and child sex crimes.

In those two cases, one of the Afghans is accused of strangling and suffocating his wife, whom he has allegedly abused for years. The other Afghan is accused of molesting 12-year-old and 14-year-old boys and threatening them with violence if they reported the abuse.

A recent National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) survey polled 1,200 likely voters across nearly 200 suburban counties in 37 states. The survey found that 8-in-10 Republicans, 5-in-10 swing voters, and 6-in-10 “suburban targets” have little confidence in the Biden administration to vet the thousands of Afghans being resettled across the U.S.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here. 

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