House Republicans Accuse Admin of Flouting Vetting Procedures for Afghans, Demand Answers on Resettlement Programs

House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer on Thursday sent a letter to two senior Biden administration officials demanding information on Afghan resettlement programs that have relocated nearly 70,000 Afghans into local communities across the U.S. in the wake of the United States’ botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In the letter to Dan Forbes, the chief of staff at the U.S. State Department’s Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts (CARE) program, and Joel Sandefur, the Afghanistan mission director at the U.S. Agency for International Development, Comer requests documents and information pertaining to the resettlement programs and their contractors that relocate Afghans into the U.S.

The State Department’s Operation Allies Welcome program has assisted displaced Afghans’ “transition into life in the U.S.,” Comer writes, including through the CARE program, which organizes relocation efforts across various U.S. government agencies.

“It is inconceivable that proper vetting procedures were followed during the chaos and disarray of the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan and questions remain to the nature of persons enrolled in domestic resettlement programs,” Comer said in a statement to National Review. “It is incumbent upon Congress to gain more transparency into the programs that have been instated to accomplish resettlement efforts and gain answers for the American people.”

The Kentucky Republican asks the officials to turn over “all contracts, agreements, memorandums of understanding, and any originating documents regarding the CARE program and other Afghan relocation efforts or programs” by October 5.

The letter goes on to request “all documents and communications reflecting the purpose, mission, and goals of the CARE program and other Afghan relocation efforts or programs” and “all documents and communications reflecting any State Department plans to continue and/or terminate the CARE program or other Afghan relocation efforts or programs.”

Additionally, Comer requests all materials related to the “hiring process, practices, and requirements for CARE (or other Afghan relocation programs) employees, contractors, and case managers” and all documents “reflecting the vetting performed by the State Department and any contractors when hiring employees, contractors, and case managers to assist with the CARE program and/or other Afghan relocation efforts or programs.”

Finally, the letter asks for a list of all employees or contractors involved in “case management, hiring, and human resources for the CARE program and other Afghan relocation efforts or programs from August 2021 to the present.”

The committee previously sent a letter to the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security in October 2021 asking for an investigation into the department’s process for “vetting and resettling of Afghans in the United States and ensuring their safe integration into American communities.” In February 2022, the committee sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas requesting additional information on the agency’s “ongoing efforts to screen tens of thousands of Afghan nationals who may be resettled in the United States.”

In the February 2022 letter, Comer alleged that the “Biden Administration did not have a coherent plan for safely resettling many of the people who were evacuated from Afghanistan” and cited reports that indicated “Afghans with serious derogatory information – including terrorist ties – were permitted to enter the United States due to lax vetting.”

“It is … likely that those evacuated from Afghanistan were not properly vetted,” Comer wrote at the time. “We are particularly concerned that terrorists or other bad actors may seek to take advantage of our goodwill, exploiting any weakness in border security and vetting of foreign nationals seeking to enter the United States.”

A preliminary “Evaluation of the Screening of Displaced Persons from Afghanistan” from the Department of Defense (DOD) Inspector General found that Afghan evacuees “were not vetted by the National Counter-Terrorism Center using all DOD data prior to arriving in [the continental United States].”

As of November 2021, 50 Afghans had been relocated to the U.S. “with information in DOD records that would indicate potentially significant security concerns,” the report found, including “individuals whose latent fingerprints have been found on improvised explosive devices and known or suspected terrorists…”