Vetting errors were found in 40% of asylum applications for Afghan migrants who entered the US following the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general report released Monday.
The DHS watchdog’s review of a sample of 678 asylum applications from Afghans who resettled in the US under the Operation Allies Welcome (OAW) program found 303 missing aliases, 23 missing security checks and more than 150 other documentation issues.
“The prevalence and type of errors suggest US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) may have missed opportunities to potentially link names provided by applicants to derogatory information,” the report stated, “which in turn would compromise the integrity of alien registration file (A-File) contents that future users rely upon for immigration administration and enforcement activities.”
In two cases, missed aliases and incomplete documentation involved individuals who may have potentially been inadmissible to the US on “terrorism-related grounds.”
In one instance, additional paperwork for the potentially inadmissible Afghan was not included, resulting in a “second level authority” not approving the analysis. In the other case, the additional paperwork was included and signed by higher-ups, but a “box indicating whether they approved or disapproved” of the analysis was left unchecked.
The IG report noted that the potential consequences of these types of documentation errors vary from being “inconsequential beyond inconvenience because the information is generally available in another location” to potentially impacting national security if the files weren’t reviewed by USCIS supervisors.
The investigation was launched after USCIS employees warned that a 2023 settlement in Ahmed v. DHS forced them to process asylum claims faster than the time needed to properly vet applicants.
“We did not observe a statistically significant increase in error rate after the September 2023 DHS settlement agreement,” the report noted.
Republicans have long expressed concerns about the Biden-era Operation Allies Welcome program, which brought more than 70,000 Afghans to the US following the botched 2021 troop withdrawal.
The Post revealed last November that more than 5,000 Afghans brought to the US via OAW were flagged for “national security” issues.
That same month, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who was resettled in the US through the program, allegedly shot two National Guard soldiers near the White House, killing one and severely injuring the other.
Joseph Edlow, the head of USCIS, agreed with all five of the DHS IG’s recommendations but said the report did not appear to take into account that the “administrative errors” took place “amid broader, established, and robust screening, vetting and security checks safeguards already in place that minimize the impact of these errors.”
“The USCIS Refugee, Asylum and International Operations Directorate’s Asylum Division’s screen, vetting and security check procedures are well-established and thorough,” Edlow wrote in a response included in the report.
