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A Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report reveals that US Citizenship and Immigration Services may have overlooked derogatory information and documentation errors in hundreds of asylum applications from Afghans, raising national security concerns regarding the integrity of alien registration files.
The DHS watchdog’s review of a sample of 678 asylum applications from Afghans who resettled in the US under the“The prevalence and type of errors suggest US Citizenship and Immigration Services may have missed opportunities to potentially link names provided by applicants to derogatory information,”, “which in turn would compromise the integrity of alien registration file contents that future users rely upon for immigration administration and enforcement activities.
” A US Marine grabs an infant over a fence of barbed wire during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Aug. 19, 2021. 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. A US Air Force Boeing C-17 Globemaster III transports Afghan citizens from Hamid Karzai International Airport, on Aug. 15, 2021. Refugees disembark from a US Air Force aircraft after an evacuation flight from Kabul at the Rota naval base in Rota, southern Spain, on Aug. 31, 2021.
“We did not observe a statistically significant increase in error rate after the September 2023 DHS settlement agreement,” the report noted. about the Biden-era Operation Allies Welcome program, which brought more than 70,000 Afghans to the US following the botched 2021 troop withdrawal. Former President Biden removes his mask before delivering remarks on the evacuation of American citizens and their families, SIV applicants and their families, and vulnerable Afghans from Afghanistan, in the East Room of the White House in Washington on Aug. 26, 2021.
, 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. A US Marine grabs an infant over a fence of barbed wire during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Aug. 19, 2021. A US Air Force Boeing C-17 Globemaster III transports Afghan citizens from Hamid Karzai International Airport, on Aug. 15, 2021.
Refugees disembark from a US Air Force aircraft after an evacuation flight from Kabul at the Rota naval base in Rota, southern Spain, on Aug. 31, 2021. Former President Biden removes his mask before delivering remarks on the evacuation of American citizens and their families, SIV applicants and their families, and vulnerable Afghans from Afghanistan, in the East Room of the White House in Washington on Aug. 26, 2021.
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