Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is lobbying Senators to 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.
Late last year, a group of Republican Senators worked with Democrats in an attempt to slip the Afghan Adjustment Act into a year-end defense spending bill that would have provided green cards to Afghans brought to the U.S. as part of Biden’s withdrawal.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), though, successfully blocked the effort.
WATCH — Sec. Blinken: Most Afghans Not Vetted Before Getting on Planes
This week, Mayorkas was back on Capitol Hill, lobbying members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to support giving green cards to Biden’s Afghans.
“This act really institutionalizes that process and also provides stability for those Afghan nationals who are here in the United States and provides them with a critical path forward.”
Grassley noted the vetting failures that federal investigators have unveiled.
“Multiple inspectors general have found the Department of Homeland Security failed to fully vet and screen Afghan evacuees before entering the United States,” Grassley said. “In one report, the Inspector General said that 50 evacuees in the United States are ‘potential significant national security concerns.’“[Emphasis added]
Mayorkas said he does not agree with the findings of the federal investigations into unvetted Afghans and would not say whether DHS knows the location or whereabouts of Afghans who are cited as potential national security risks.
In 2021, Grassley requested information about the number of Afghans who sought entry to the United States 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.
In September 2022, 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.”
WATCH: DOD Official Confirms Lack of Vetting for Afghans on Planes
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 United States, 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 United States 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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