Representative Mark Green (R., Tenn.) issued a subpoena to the Department of Homeland Security and its secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, for records pertaining to the emergency evacuation of Afghanistan in August 2021.
Green, who serves as chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, specifically requested that Mayorkas provide documents that explain how the Biden administration screened over 76,000 Afghans during the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s subsequent takeover of the country. The DHS chief has failed to provide “satisfactory documents and other materials” since Green’s initial request in May, according to the committee.
The committee contacted the agency multiple times before receiving some of the requested records late last month.
“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,” Green wrote on Tuesday in a letter sent to Mayorkas. “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.”
Another complication the congressional committee faced was that information in one of the spreadsheets was either “locked or password-protected,” an issue that the federal department failed to resolve in a timely manner. The committee issued both the letter and subpoena to force the DHS to cooperate.
“While the produced documents provide some basic information regarding Afghan evacuees, they fall well short of what was requested by the Committee,” Green added. “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.”
In 2021, the committee first asked the DHS for information relevant to the catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal as tens of thousands of Afghan refugees entered the U.S. Green and other congressmen continue to press the department and Mayorkas due to their insufficient responses.
The subpoena requires Mayorkas to appear before the committee with the requested documents in hand on November 7 at noon.