Republican lawmakers and social media influencers are slamming former Biden administration officials who were adamant that Afghan refugees in 2021 were being properly vetted. In the wake of a shooting in Washington, D.C. involving an Afghan national, FBI Director Kash Patel said “zero” vetting was done.
“You miss all the signs when you do absolutely zero vetting — and that’s exactly what happened in this case,” Patel said at a Thursday press conference. “When the prior administration made the decision to allow thousands of people in without doing a single background check or vetting, that’s how you miss every single sign.”
Two National Guardsmen were critically wounded when a suspected shooter, identified as 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, opened fire on them near the White House. The suspect reportedly arrived in the U.S. under the Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome, established after the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.
Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) reposted footage from Sept. 2021 of then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who assured that no Afghan refugees were coming to the United States without “a thorough screening and background check process.”
“Care to ‘circle back’?” Gill said on X, referring to a phrase Psaki would often use as press secretary.
Washington Examiner’s homeland security reporter Anna Giaritelli shared a thread on X recalling a 2021 report she wrote. She stated that “almost none of the 82,000 people airlifted from Kabul” had been vetted, and less than 5,000 of these were U.S. citizens.
Other X users have shared clips of former President Joe Biden and then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s remarks regarding Operation Allies Welcome, pointing out how their assurances that refugees were being properly vetted contradicted Patel’s assessment that “zero” vetting was done.
Omri Ceren, Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) senior policy and communications adviser, blasted CNN for fact-checking Cruz in 2021 for claiming the Biden administration was “inviting terrorism” by airlifting Afghan refugees with insufficient vetting.
CNN claimed it was “misleading” to suggest refugees were not being properly vetted.
Vice President JD Vance recalled how he had criticized the Operation Allies Welcome program in 2021, and was called “racist” by friends via messages for doing so. He added that the Trump administration needs to “redouble our efforts” to deport those who have “no right to be in our country.”
“Already some voices in corporate media chirp that our immigration policies are too harsh. Tonight is a reminder of why they’re wrong,” Vance wrote on X.
Elon Musk reposted Vance’s statement on X and said the vice president was “right.” He also responded to Vance’s original video from August 2021, saying it was “prescient.”
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Patel and U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro identified the shooting victims as Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and Andrew Wolfe, 24.
Both had been sworn in for duty less than 24 hours before they were shot in the head.
