Only one of the 38,000 people flown out of Afghanistan and on to U.S. bases in Europe over the past three weeks has failed the national security screening process, according to a top Air Force official.
Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters told reporters on Thursday that one Afghan evacuee was denied the ability to continue onward to the United States after being flagged in an initial review and failing a second screening. The person is not considered a “high threat,” but Wolters did not disclose why he was denied admission.
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“That individual is currently in the appropriate custody with U.S. interagency officials,” Wolters said. “We are still working his background investigation.”
The tens of thousands of Afghans flown out of the country over the past month have been taken to the Middle East and Europe, where they are being screened before going on to the U.S. The U.S. European Command spans across Germany, Italy, and Spain. Fifty-eight others initially failed their first screening but were cleared in a follow-up interview.
The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for verifying each person’s identity and running background checks to ensure someone on the terror watch list or other list is not admitted. DHS officials from U.S. Customs and Border Protection are screening approximately 250 people per hour, according to Wolters.
A former FBI special agent who tracked counterterrorism cases warned last week that terrorists in Afghanistan stand a high chance of walking right onto U.S.-bound planes as a result of the Biden administration’s dissemination of blank visa papers throughout the country.
“The threat of having Islamic State or al Qaeda come into the country is not increased through the southwest border,” said Kenneth Gray, a senior lecturer in the Fire Science and Emergency Management Department at the University of New Haven in Connecticut. “It’s the entry of al Qaeda and Islamic State in the groups of refugees that are being taken out of Afghanistan and possibly to the United States because of the lack of vetting procedures, that would normally go on, to expedite getting all of these people out of Afghanistan.”
David Fox, an American trapped in Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul, said in August that he received a lookalike visa paper from the State Department. The same paper, he claimed, was sent to thousands of other citizens and immigrants who may qualify for the Special Immigrant Visa. The form is blank, with no name, serial number, or bar code. The lack of information on the form means that U.S. officials cannot know if someone with that paper was intended to have it or if the visa was photocopied.
“When you provide blank visas without specific names already on them, and without going through the vetting process, don’t be surprised when you end up with ISIS or al Qaeda showing up with those visas in hand,” Gray said.
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Screenings in Europe and the Middle East are preliminary and will be done again in the U.S., along with a health screening and coronavirus testing. Afghans will also receive the coronavirus vaccine, a significant move by the Biden administration given that thousands of migrants who have illegally come across the southern border each day since the spring are not being tested or vaccinated by the federal government upon release from custody.
CBP said in a statement to the Washington Examiner that it tracks known or suspected terrorists through a multilayered, rigorous screening process.
