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Several Senate Republicans are calling for the Trump administration to revisit vetting standards for Afghan nationals following the shooting of two National Guard members last week.
In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, over a half dozen Senate Republicans argued that it was “past time for the United States to revisit the deficiencies of the Biden administration’s vetting process for Afghan nationals,” in the wake of former President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Their letter comes after the shooting of two National Guard members — U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, who was wounded, and U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, who was killed — allegedly by Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan man that entered the country under Biden’s Operation Allies Welcome in 2021.
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Lakanwal, 29, was charged with two counts of assault with intent to kill, one count of murder and one count of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence, for the alleged shooting late last month.
The lawmakers, including Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.; Susan Collins, R-Maine; James Risch, R-Idaho; James Lankford, R-Okla.; John Cornyn, R-Texas; Ted Budd, R-N.C.; Mike Rounds, R-S.D.; and Todd Young, R-Ind.; wrote that the Biden administration’s assertion that all Afghan nationals were following the withdrawal from the country in 2021 were subject to “enhanced vetting” was untrue.
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They wrote that a 2022 Department of War inspector general report found that Operation Allies Refuge and Operation Allies Welcome, two programs launched in the wake of Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, did not use data from the Pentagon to vet Afghan evacuees.
Through Automated Biometric Identification System data, the National Ground Intelligence Center found that at least 50 people had “potentially significant security concerns,” ranging from petty theft on military bases to fingerprints found on improvised explosive devices.
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A later report agreed with the Pentagon’s findings and “further found that approximately 31,000 Afghan evacuees were allowed into the country before DHS could form a taskforce to vet and support their resettlement.”
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“Congress is further aware of potentially hundreds of evacuees that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has found to have potential links to terrorism after their arrival in the United States,” they wrote.
The lawmakers demanded that the Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security and the intelligence community revisit the vetting standards for Afghan nationals, and implement the vetting procedures recommended by the Department of War years ago, identify and locate those evacuees discovered to have significant security concerns, and “seek immediate removal of such evacuees from the United States back to Afghanistan or other third countries, as appropriate.”
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