Biden bungled Afghan vetting. Trump must do a fresh review.

Activists are descending on Washington this week to lobby Congress to bring in more Afghan nationals to join the 200,000 ushered in by the Biden administration after its bungled Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021, despite whistleblower warnings about the national security threat posed by inadequate vetting and rampant visa corruption.

At least four of Joe Biden’s Afghan evacuees have been arrested on terrorism charges.

It was a year ago this month that one of the evacuees allegedly ambushed two members of the West Virginia National Guard in Washington, DC, fatally shooting Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and grievously injuring Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24.

Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, who entered the US in September 2021 as part of the “Operation Allied Welcome” evacuation from Kabul, pleaded not guilty on all charges over the Nov. 26 attack and is in federal custody awaiting trial.

‘More of a risk’

At least three other Afghans arrested on terrorism-related charges were among more than 70,000 granted Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) with automatic green cards, say two federal government whistleblowers who are urging the Trump administration to urgently re-vet all the visa holders before they are eligible for citizenship, in the next year.

“I have sleepless nights thinking there will be another 9/11 style terrorist attack,” says one of the whistleblowers.

“These people are on their way to citizenship.”

SIV-holders “are more of a risk than other Afghan immigrants because the SIV process was corrupted and vetting was largely compromised.”

Lakanwal was on humanitarian parole awaiting SIV approval.

Other SIV-holders-turned-alleged-terrorists include Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, who was arrested over an Election Day 2024 terror plot on polling places in Oklahoma City.

He had entered the US in September 2021 during the chaotic Biden administration Kabul evacuation effort. He pleaded guilty to material support to ISIS and a related firearms charge after buying AK-47-style rifles and ammunition from an undercover FBI agent.

In Fort Worth, Texas, Mohammad Dawood Alokozay, 30, another alleged illegal alien terrorist who also arrived during the same Biden administration evacuation effort, was charged last November with making a terrorist threat after allegedly saying he would “build a bomb” and “conduct a suicide attack” on “infidels” and US citizens.

In Waynesboro, Va., Jaan Shah Safi, 48, was arrested last December for allegedly providing material support to ISIS-K.

The SIV program granted green cards to Afghan evacuees who had given at least one year of “faithful service” to the US government in Afghanistan. Five years later, the SIVs become eligible to be converted to citizenship.

But the whistleblowers discovered that potentially thousands of Afghan SIV-holders used faked letters vouching for their “faithful service.”

Evacuees were paying visa fixers in Afghanistan who paid corrupt US officials to sign fraudulent letters of recommendation, they say.

They estimate as many as 2,000 fraudulent letter-writers received between $3,500 and $40,000 per letter, “depending on how bad the person was that wanted to come in.”

Fake letters

Two years ago, US Navy Reserve officer, Cmdr. Jeromy Pittmann, 53, of Pensacola, Fla., was sentenced to more than two years in prison for accepting thousands of dollars in bribes from Afghan nationals in exchange for signing more than 20 fraudulent letters of recommendation for Afghan SIVs who claimed they were translators for the US military.

But arrests are few and far between.

Most disturbing, the whistleblowers found that “Morgan A. Killington,” a CIA official whose signature was on 12,300 letters of recommendation for Afghan Siv-holders, never existed.

Both Lakanwal, the National Guard suspect, and Tawhedi, the Oklahoma City suspect, received fake Killington letters.

Lakanwal reportedly was part of a paramilitary force that worked with the CIA in Afghanistan. “Zero Units” were labeled “death squads” by human rights groups who allege they committed mass killings of Afghan civilians.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) questioned FBI Director Kash Patel about the Killington letters during a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing in September.

“According to State Department emails, Killington is not a real person,” Grassley said.

“The Afghan evacuee charged with shooting two West Virginia National Guardsmen and the Afghan evacuee charged with funding ISIS-K received those letters of recommendation. Clearly, this is a sign of failed vetting.

“Is the FBI performing ongoing reviews to ensure known or suspected terrorists didn’t slip into the country or otherwise should’ve been barred from entry?” Grassley continued

Patel replied opaquely that the FBI is “going to continue to work with our intel partners to reach back through and analyze Operation Allies Welcome after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, and we’ll continue to vet those individuals to make sure we never have an event, a tragic terrorist attack, like we witnessed here in the heart of Washington, DC, last year in Thanksgiving.”

It will be a big job to re-vet all the 70,000 plus SIV holders who pose an urgent threat, according to the whistleblowers.

40% error rate

In September, the DHS Office of Inspector General revealed that Biden’s Operation Allies Welcome program had a “40% error rate in adjudicating asylum claims . . . which put the United States at risk of admitting potential terrorists and other dangerous criminals,” said Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

In September 2022, the DHS inspector general had reported that Afghan evacuees’ “identity data [was] inaccurate, incomplete, or missing . . . 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.”

But Biden’s DHS Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, refused to implement the inspector general’s recommendations for screening and vetting evacuees.

Went the Trump administration came into office, it restricted immigration from Afghanistan, but a court last week stopped the deportation of more than 150 Afghan nationals to Pakistan.

Shawn VanDiver, a veteran, and founder of AfghanEvac, the NGO most involved in bringing in evacuees, hailed the court decision last week.

“Today is a good day,” he said at a news conference. “But this is a reprieve . . . We haven’t stopped this fight forever. This is just a pause.”

VanDiver is back in Washington this week, on what he calls a “Capitol Hill fly-in” to pressure members of Congress to pass bipartisan legislation to bring in more Afghans.