House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-TN) issued a subpoena to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday over documents related to the screening of the tens of thousands of Afghans the Biden administration brought into the U.S. during the August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Green and other House lawmakers have been investigating how the Biden administration screened the more than 76,000 Afghans flown into the U.S. for resettlement as the military left Afghanistan and the Taliban took over. According to Green, Mayorkas has not provided all of the documents requested, including DHS communications on vetting the evacuees, documents which were requested 160 days ago.
“In the wake of the Biden administration’s catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the country has once again become a breeding ground for foreign terrorist organizations under Taliban rule, and the Committee is still seeking answers on how the Biden administration vetted those entering the United States following the withdrawal,” Green’s office said in a press release.
Green’s subpoena stipulates that Mayorkas is to appear before the committee on November 7 at the Ford House Office Building in Washington, D.C., at 12:00 p.m.
“On October 20, 2023, the Department provided a partial production containing limited data on Afghan evacuees. Although the production contained 1,601 pages, it is wholly inadequate. For example, 150 pages were either wholly redacted, devoid of content, or illegible. Further, many of the remaining pages appear to be nothing more than scanned printouts from spreadsheets of data that were provided in a format that rendered them indecipherable,” Green wrote in a letter to Mayorkas.
The lawmakers’ investigation into the screening of the evacuees comes after stories that some of the Afghans brought into the U.S. faced charges of attempted rape of a minor and other physical abuse in addition to dozens being flagged for potential terror ties.
“While the produced documents provide some basic information regarding Afghan evacuees, they fall well short of what was requested by the Committee. For example, the Department failed to produce a single e-mail or other communication from Department employees related to the withdrawal from Afghanistan or Customs and Border Protection’s screening, vetting, or inspection of Afghan evacuees at U.S. ports of entry,” Green added in his letter.
Last year, the Inspector General for DHS released a scathing report that said that the agency “may have admitted or paroled individuals into the United States who pose a risk to national security and the safety of local communities.”
At least two Afghan evacuees were shipped out of the U.S. after they were initially let in, while State Department officials have also investigated adult male Afghan evacuees who had child “brides” with them at processing centers in the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates. U.S. military bases that housed the evacuees incurred millions of dollars in damages, making some facilities unusable for U.S. soldiers.
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