Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) successfully blocked the Republican establishment, joined by Democrats, in their efforts to slip a provision in a year-end spending package that would give green cards to tens of thousands of Afghans brought to the United States by President Joe Biden despite allegations of widespread vetting failures.
Following the U.S. Armed Forces’ withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, Biden opened a refugee pipeline that has resettled more than 86,000 Afghans in American communities — many without having to be screened or interviewed in person beforehand.
For months, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Roy Blunt (R-MO) have garnered more GOP support for their Afghan Adjustment Act that would give green cards to most of the Afghans brought to the U.S. by the Biden administration.
Most recently, Sens. Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Roger Wicker (R-MS) signed onto the plan, joining Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Chris Coons (D-DE), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).
The group of Senators failed to get the green card plan into the year-end National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and were hoping to slip it into the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package but failed, thanks to pushback from Grassley.
NBC News reports:
Grassley, of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said through his office that he opposed how the Biden administration had used “humanitarian parole” to cover such a large group of refugees and that the bill failed to sufficiently address concerns about security vetting of the refugees. [Emphasis added]
“The administration’s failure to properly vet Afghan evacuees throughout this process has resulted in individuals being flagged for security concerns after they’d already arrived into the United States,” Grassley’s office said. [Emphasis added]
“The Senate has received a series of classified briefings on this issue, and Sen. Grassley has been outspoken about the need for transparency so all Americans can know the full scope of these security concerns in the United States.” [Emphasis added]
Last year, Grassley requested information about the number of Afghans who sought entry to the U.S. who were listed on the federal government’s “No Fly List” because of their ties to Islamic terrorism. Biden’s top agency officials have refused to disclose the total.
Vetting failures, as Breitbart News has chronicled, have plagued Biden’s massive Afghan resettlement operation that has seen Afghans resettled across nearly all 50 states.
In September, the DHS Inspector General issued a bombshell report detailing how Biden brought Afghans to the U.S. who were “not fully vetted” and may “pose a risk to national security.”
Similarly, in February 2022, a Department of Defense (DOD) Inspector General report revealed that Biden’s agencies failed to properly vet Afghans arriving in the U.S., and that about 50 Afghans were flagged for “significant security concerns” after their resettlement.
Most of the unvetted Afghans flagged for possible terrorism ties, the DOD Inspector General report states, have since disappeared into American communities. The report noted that as of September 17, 2021, only three of 31 Afghans flagged with specific “derogatory information” could be located.
Independent whistleblower reports have come to the same conclusions.
In August, Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) detailed allegations from a whistleblower who claims that the Biden administration knowingly resettled almost 400 Afghans in the U.S. who were listed as “potential threats” in federal databases and urged staff to cut corners in the vetting process.
A Project Veritas report alleges that the Biden administration resettled Afghans listed on the federal government’s “Terrorism Watch List” in communities across America.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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