Despite widespread vetting failures, President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is offering parole extensions to tens of thousands of Afghan nationals who were resettled across the United States in 2021 and 2022.
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 been screened or interviewed in person beforehand.
On Thursday, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that the administration will begin offering Afghans the ability to renew their parole for a year as well as a two-year extension for those who have continuously claimed asylum.
RELATED: Sec. Blinken: Most Afghans Not Vetted Before Getting on Planes
US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations“Through this new streamlined and fee-exempt process, eligible Afghan nationals will be able to continue living and working here as they pursue a permanent status,” Mayorkas said in a statement.
The move comes as vetting failures have been widely reported.
Most recently, a former Department of Defense (DOD) official revealed to Congress that some Afghans were resettled in the U.S. before they were found to have been involved in placing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan to kill American troops.
In 2021, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) 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.
In September 2022, the DHS Inspector General issued a bombshell report detailing how the Biden administration brought Afghans to the U.S. who were “not fully vetted” and may “pose a risk to national security.”
RELATED: DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Admits Failure to Check Afghan Migrants
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 2022, 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 American communities.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.