House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark E. Green, MD (R-TN) and Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence Chairman August Pfluger (R-TX), blasted the Biden-Harris administration after the arrest of an Afghan national in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who was charged with plotting a terrorist attack on Election Day.
Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi has been charged by the Department of Justice with plotting the attack on behalf of ISIS. “Tawhedi was brought to Oklahoma under the Biden-Harris administration’s special immigrant visa program following the administration’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan. CC 1 is Tawhedi’s brother-in-law and was brought to the U.S. in 2018,” The Daily Wire noted.
“When tens of thousands of insufficiently vetted individuals are let into the interior, this is the inevitable result,” the two GOP leaders wrote. “This Committee has repeatedly warned of the terror threats stemming from the Biden-Harris administration’s failed leadership and disastrous border security policies. Unfortunately, our calls for transparency regarding the inadequate vetting and screening following the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan continue to go unanswered—and, here, Americans almost paid the price. We appreciate the efforts of law enforcement in thwarting this alleged terror plot on Election Day, but President Biden and Vice President Harris must reverse course on their misguided policies and put the safety and security of the American people first.”
In May 2024, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) reported that DHS’ process of vetting and identifying derogatory information Afghan parolees for Operation Allies Welcome was problematic. Prior to that, in 2023, Green issued a subpoena to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for documents and information on the vetting and screening of Afghan evacuees entering the United States since 2021. Mayorkas had stonewalled the House Committee on Homeland Security’s request for documents and materials after a May 2023 request.
“While the produced documents provide some basic information regarding Afghan evacuees, they fall well short of what was requested by the Committee,” Green wrote at the time. “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 (CBP) screening, vetting, or inspection of Afghan evacuees at U.S. Ports of Entry.”
In April 2023, Pfluger led the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence to hear testimony from national security experts on the dangerous consequences to U.S. homeland security from the botched 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. Simone Ledeen, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, stated, “I am increasingly concerned given the sheer number of people that are crossing over…Those first couple of planes that took off from Kabul Airport were full of people who had not been vetted, and subsequent vetting actually showed that some of them had in place IEDs and appeared on our biometrics, so I have very grave concerns about this.”
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