DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Admits Failure to Check Afghan Migrants

President Joe Biden’s border chief admitted to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) that officials have not fully checked the identity and purposes of all Afghans who crowded into U.S. aircraft in Kabul.

“You are correct that we are not conducting in-person full refugee interviews of 100 percent of the individuals,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told Hawley during the Tuesday hearing at the Senate’s judiciary committee.

Hawley compared the chaotic airlift of Afghans to the reckless lack of U.S. border security prior to the Al Qaeda 2001 destruction of New York’s Twin Towers:

Hawley: Do you know how many of the 9/11 hijackers – the 20 who tried to enter this country – do you know how many of them were given an in-depth interview by a trained security official?

Mayorkas: I do not.

Hawley: One. The answer is one. That person did not enter the country. The others were not given an interview. We know the outcome. For that reason, the 9/11 Commission recommended in-person interviews for all refugees and others brought to this country in these circumstances. That was 20 years ago.

Hawley reminded Mayorkas of alleged crimes committed by Afghans at U.S. bases, saying:

Are you following what’s happening to people who’ve been brought to this country? On September 19, a female U.S. service member was assaulted by a group of male Afghan evacuees housed at Fort Bliss. [On] September 5, a report from your office, the DHS officials at intake centers in Wisconsin identified numerous incidents in which Afghan girls had been presented to authorities as the underage “wives” of much older men [and] other reports of assaults and rapes by Afghan men for Afghan girls. These are some of the folks who’ve been brought here because they haven’t been screened, because you haven’t conducted interviews. Don’t you think that’s a problem?

Mayorkas replied:

Senator, those individuals have been screened, as I spoke of previously. Let me share with you that if an individual violates a condition of parole… They can be criminally prosecuted depending on the reason for their violation …

I want to make sure we understand that the incidence of violations of parole, which Senator [Hawley] correctly pointed to, is the great exception, the extraordinary exception, and not the rule. We are incredibly proud of Operation Allies Welcome and our ability to resettle individuals who have worked alongside us in the theater of war, and who otherwise need humanitarian protection.

Biden and his deputies have imported more than 50,000 Afghans — few of whom actually fought alongside U.S. forces that sought to help the Afghans keep the Taliban out of power.

Democratic legislators and appointees want to bring in more unskilled and poor Afghan migrants, even though the poor and unskilled Afghans will drag down Americans’ wages and drive up Americans’ housing costs.