Horowitz: New gov’t watchdog report accuses DHS of settling Afghans with no vetting

It sure seems like Novak Djokovic is the only one in the world not welcome in this country. Everyone else is fair game.

There is no right for a foreign national to immigrate to the U.S. as there is for an American to remain here unmonitored by the government. As such, it’s government’s responsibility to vet foreign nationals who seek entry, not to vet the political opinions of American opponents of the current president. Yet our government and national security apparatus have it completely backward. They spend all their resources focusing on targeting conservatives as the number-one threat to homeland security, while waving in tens of thousands of people from the most dangerous and radical parts of the world without proper verification, according to a new government watchdog report.

Remember the 80,000 Afghans the Biden administration resettled last summer? According to a new report from the DHS inspector general, U.S. Customs and Border Protection lacked “critical data” needed to properly screen these people coming from a source country of radical Islamic extremism. What sort of critical data?

We determined 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 missing. We also determined CBP admitted or paroled evacuees who were not fully vetted into the United States.

Oh! So as Biden’s DHS focuses solely on “extremism” of domestic political adversaries as the number-one homeland security threat, officials have no problem admitting thousands of people from a country steeped in honor killings, sharia supremacism, and subjugation of women, as well as actual kinetic terrorist activities.

Even more shocking was the fact that when the IG’s office asked CBP for a list of those admitted or paroled for whom they lacked proper data (or even screening), officials conceded that no such list exists. In other words, they disappeared into the population. “As a result, DHS may have admitted or paroled individuals into the United States who pose a risk to national security and the safety of local communities,” concluded the IG’s report, released on Tuesday.

As always, the report offered CBP the obvious recommendation to “immediately” identify all the Afghans in the U.S., provide proper proof of vetting, and then develop a contingency plan for vetting in future emergency evacuations.

Pretty non-controversial recommendations, right? I mean, we can offer excuses about the chaos and time constraints endemic in the Biden administration’s refugee plan, but a year later, this should be the DHS’ top priority, right? Wrong!

“The report does not reflect the interagency nature of the vetting process, despite significant efforts and multiple attempts by DHS program officials, subject matter experts, and others to provide the OIG a comprehensive understanding of the extensive details related to the numerous facts and nuances of the unprecedented OAW vetting process,” wrote DHS official Jim Crumpacker in response to the IG’s recommendations.

I guess that settles that. It’s just simply too complicated to protect Americans from external threats. Yet somehow, it’s safe to say they don’t have a problem with interagency nuances when “vetting” American political opponents.

The DHS also asserts that it did indeed screen all the refugees (yes, perhaps enough to ensure they are not Trump supporters!). The problem is they failed to produce any of the supporting documents to the IG. Moreover, in February, the DOD inspector general released a report identifying at least 50 Afghans who pose "potentially significant security concerns." The reported noted that dozens of them who had "derogatory information" that would make them ineligible for parole were unable to be located.

What sort of derogatory information? We’re not even talking about those who believe women are chattel and infidels should be subjugated. That is likely a massive percentage of them. We are talking about concerns that “include individuals whose latent fingerprints have been found on improvised explosive devices and known or suspected terrorists and for which the NGIC sends derogatory information notifications to appropriate DoD personnel." At the time of the report, only three of those individuals had been located.

Then again, perhaps our government is correct in asserting that these people had been vetted. It’s all a matter of what they find to be a threat and what they are looking for.

Ironically, nearly every prominent Republican supported this massive Afghan evacuation. These are the same neo-conservatives who believe we need to “fight them there so they don’t come here,” but the only way they can come here is if we bring them here. Then they feel guilty because we indeed are there fomenting more civil wars and creating unrest, and they feel responsible to bring all those people to our shores!

Importantly, this is only the opening act. The Biden administration’s modus operandi is to bring in huge numbers of people from any part of the world facing a war or disaster. Officials are planning to resettle 125,000 additional refugees from around the world in fiscal year 2023. Over 100,000 Ukrainians are expected to be admitted into the United States. Despite not being designated as official refugees, the Additional Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act, passed by Congress in May, makes the parolees eligible for refugee resettlement programs. So when the DHS says officials have no plans to create a contingency plan for vetting, it will be relevant every year during the next “current thing” that turns into a geopolitical emergency.

Then, of course, there is our own border. So far this fiscal year, there have been over 2 million encounters, over 500,000 gotaways, and over 10,000 pounds of fentanyl discovered. The degree of security risk all of this collectively poses is unimaginable, yet our government will continue to focus solely on we the people.

Once again, we must ask: What is the purpose of having a Department of Homeland security at this point? Now, 21 years after 9/11, our government is exacerbating the very factor that led to the attacks while spying on Americans under the guise of counterterrorism.