How were Afghan evacuees vetted under Biden?

The shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., one of whom later died, led to major changes in the Trump administration’s immigration policy.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the suspect from Afghanistan entered the United States under the Afghan resettlement plan launched during the Biden administration.

And Republican officials claimed without providing evidence that he had not been vetted.

DHS suspended all immigration claims for Afghan citizens “pending further review of security and vetting protocols.”

DHS said the suspect, 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, entered the United States as part of an Afghan resettlement plan called Operation Allied Welcome (OAW).

The plan was launched in August 2021 under the Biden administration to resettle “vulnerable” Afghans following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan that same year.

Calling a reporter “idiot” who asked why he blamed the Biden administration for the Washington attack, President Trump said, “They came in, they weren’t vetted, they weren’t checked.”

At the FBI’s press conference, the agency’s director, Kash Patel, claimed that the previous administration “decided to allow thousands of people into this country without doing a single background check or review.”

And in Press release on the day of the attackDHS said the suspect was “one of thousands of Afghan citizens allowed into the country under the Biden administration’s Operation Welcome Allies program.”

This week on X, Vice President J.D. Vance recalled comments he made in 2021 “He criticizes Biden’s policy of opening the floodgates to unchecked Afghan refugees.”

He made similar statements about review failures in an interview with CBS earlier this year.. Vance drew attention to the case of an Afghan citizen who was evacuated to the USA after the Taliban took over: later charged with terrorism-related crimes.

Lakanwal entered the US via OAW on September 8, 2021, shortly after the fall of Kabul.

Many Afghans, especially those who had worked with Western governments, faced serious risk of persecution by the Taliban.

More than 190,000 Afghans were resettled under OAW and another program called Permanent Welcome. According to a report released this year by the US State Department.

Most Afghan citizens who participated in the OAW program were allowed to stay in the country for two years under a process known as “parole.”

Afghans on parole are subject to reporting requirements (such as medical screenings and critical vaccinations) and may lose their right to remain in the United States if these requirements are not met.

Individuals who took “significant risks” to support US troops in Afghanistan were considered legal permanent residents after completing the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) process.

According to the charity AfghanEvac, Lakanwal had an active SIV application but was granted asylum this year under the current Trump administration.

We have contacted the White House for more details regarding Lakanwal’s review. He didn’t provide these, but he told us this:

“This animal would never be here if it weren’t for Joe Biden’s dangerous policies that have allowed countless criminals to invade our country and harm the American people.

“The Trump Administration, in the face of relentless opposition from Democrats, is taking every possible action to remove these monsters from our country and clean up the mess created by the Biden Administration.”

We also contacted DHS and the CIA, who did not hear back.

While we do not know the suspect’s vetting arrangements prior to entering the United States, we do know how vetting should work for the plan he arrived at.

An archived government website for the OAW schemeThe document, last updated earlier this year, describes a “rigorous” and “multi-layered” vetting process that includes collecting biometric information such as fingerprints and photographs before Afghans are allowed to enter the country.

He cites the multiple government agencies involved in the investigation, including the FBI and the National Counterterrorism Center.

Then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in 2021: He said the government had “established a robust screening and review architecture” under the program.

There are mixed reports on the effectiveness of the program’s review.

2022 audit conducted by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) An oversight body of the U.S. government found that “some information used to vet evacuees through U.S. Government databases (such as name, date of birth, identification number, and travel document data) was inaccurate, incomplete, or incomplete.”

The OIG said this problem stemmed in part from DHS’s failure to maintain a list of evacuated Afghans who “lacked adequate identification.”

It also reported that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “is accepting or paroling evacuees who have not been fully vetted in the United States.”

two years later another OIG audit of the plan found weaknesses in the government’s ability to identify potentially negative information (such as national security concerns) about some Afghan parolees.

But at the beginning of this year OIG praises FBI For his role in screening Afghans in the program.

“Overall, we found that each of the FBI’s responsible elements effectively communicated and addressed the potential national security risks identified,” he said.

As well as reviewing the OAW audits, BBC Verify contacted a number of experts for their views on the review process.

Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration analyst at the Cato Institute think tank, said the program was “more inconsistent than usual based on OIG accounts and compared to the more intensive refugee vetting process.”

“Due to the chaotic nature of the evacuation, information was lost and some checks were not carried out until the migrants were out of Afghanistan.”

Jennie Murray, President and CEO of immigration advocacy group National Immigration Forum, told BBC Verify that evacuees were initially located at US military bases where they were processed.

“The evacuees were processed at military bases and held for several weeks, even months, until they were ready to enter the United States. This is when security vetting and medical screening were extensively processed,” he said.

“Even the best analysis cannot predict the future. [Lakanwal] “He could have had a clean record, he could have been a suitable candidate for humanitarian protection, and then something changed.”

Ms Murray said thousands of Afghans had settled safely in the US in the four years since the evacuation and this was the first major incident.

“Just because one person commits a terrible act does not mean that other Afghans are no longer a threat,” he added.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe told the BBC’s US partner CBS News that the suspect was working with the CIA in Afghanistan.

The BBC’s Afghan Service spoke to a soldier from Lakanwal’s former military unit, the Kandahar Strike Force (KSF).

The soldier said a vetting took about three to four weeks to get into the unit, which was recommended by a senior KSF officer, and a “call history check” of his mobile devices was carried out.

If the candidate has passed this stage, they may be directed to a security check performed by the US, which involves the collection of biometric data from the applicant.

The Afghan Service met with a commander from the KSF unit and confirmed the soldier’s account. The commander also confirmed the soldier’s identity and added that a criminal record check was also carried out as part of the investigation process.