How were Afghan evacuees vetted under Biden?

The shooting of two National Guard members in Washington DC, one of whom later died, has led to major changes in immigration policy by the Trump administration.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said the suspect – from Afghanistan – had entered the United States under the Afghan resettlement plan launched during the Biden administration.

And Republican officials have claimed without providing evidence that they were not investigated.

DHS has suspended processing all immigration requests involving Afghan nationals “pending further review of security and screening protocols.”

DHS said the suspect, 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, entered the US under Operation Ally’s Welcome (OAW), an Afghan resettlement plan.

The plan was launched in August 2021 under the Biden administration to resettle “vulnerable” Afghans following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan the same year.

“They came in, they were not vetted, they were unchecked,” said President Trump, who called a reporter an “idiot” when asked why he blamed the Biden administration for the Washington attack.

At an FBI press conference, agency director Kash Patel claimed that the previous administration had “made the decision to allow thousands of people into this country without doing a single background check or vetting”.

And in a press release on the day of the attack, DHS said the suspect was “one of thousands of Afghan nationals released into the country under the Biden administration’s Operation Ally Welcome program”.

This week on X, Vice President JD Vance recalled comments he made in 2021 criticizing “Biden’s policy of opening the floodgates to unvetted Afghan refugees”.

He made similar comments about investigative failures in an interview with CBS earlier this year. Vance highlighted the case of an Afghan national who was flown to the US after being captured by the Taliban, who was later charged with terrorism-related crimes.

Lakhanwal entered the US through OAW on 8 September 2021, soon after the fall of Kabul.

Many Afghans faced serious risk of persecution by the Taliban, especially those who worked with Western governments.

More than 190,000 Afghans have been resettled under OAW and another program called Enduring Welcome, according to a report published this year by the US State Department.

Most Afghan nationals who entered the OAW program were allowed to remain in the country for up to two years under a process called “parole.”

Afghans on parole are subject to reporting requirements (such as medical examinations and important vaccinations) and may lose their right to remain in the US if these requirements are not met.

People who faced “significant risk” to support US troops in Afghanistan were admitted as lawful permanent residents after completing the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) process.

According to the charity AfghanEvac, Lakenwal had an active SIV application, but was granted asylum this year under the current Trump administration.

We contacted the White House for more information about Lacanval’s investigation. It did not provide them but told us:

“This animal would never be here if it weren’t for Joe Biden’s dangerous policies, which have allowed countless criminals to invade our country and harm the American people.

“The Trump administration is taking every possible measure — in the face of incredible Democrat opposition — to drive these monsters out of our country and clean up the mess made by the Biden administration.”

We also contacted DHS and the CIA, who did not contact us.

Although we don’t know the vetting arrangement for the suspect before he entered the US, we do know how the vetting would work given the plan he came under.

An archived government website for the OAW scheme, last updated earlier this year, mentioned a “rigorous” and “multi-layered” screening process, which included collecting biometric information such as fingerprints and photographs from Afghans before they were allowed to enter the country.

It mentions multiple government agencies involved in the investigation, including the FBI and the National Counterterrorism Center.

Alejandro Mayorkas, then-Secretary of Homeland Security, said in 2021 that the government “has established a robust screening and vetting architecture” under the plan.

There have been mixed reports on the effectiveness of the program’s investigations.

A 2022 audit conducted by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), a US government watchdog, found that “some information used to screen evacuees through US government databases (such as names, dates of birth, identification numbers, and travel document data) was inaccurate, incomplete, or missing”.

The OIG said the problem was partly a result of DHS not having a list of Afghan evacuees “who lacked sufficient identification documents.”

It also reported that US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “admitted or paroled evacuees into the United States who were not fully vetted”.

Another OIG audit of the plan two years later found weaknesses in the government’s ability to identify potentially negative information (such as national security concerns) about some Afghan parolees.

However, earlier this year the OIG praised the FBI for its role in screening Afghans in the scheme.

It said, “Overall we found that each responsible element of the FBI effectively communicated and addressed any potential national security risks identified.”

As well as reviewing the OAW’s audit, BBC Verify contacted a number of experts to get their views on the investigation process.

Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration analyst at the Cato Institute think tank, said the program was “more inconsistent than usual by OIG accounts and compared to the more thorough refugee review process”.

“Due to the chaotic nature of the evacuation, information was lost and few checks were conducted until the migrants had left Afghanistan.”

Jenny Murray, president and CEO of the immigration advocacy group National Immigration Forum, told BBC Verify that she was present at US military bases where the removal process was initially carried out.

“The evacuees were processed at military bases and held for several weeks, and even months, until they were ready for entry into the United States. This was when the process of security screening and medical screening was carried out on a large scale”, he said.

“Even the best investigators can’t predict the future. He (Lakanwal) could have had a clean record, been a suitable candidate for humanitarian protection, and then something changed.”

Ms Murray said that in the four years since the evacuation, thousands of Afghans have settled safely in the US and this is the first major development.

“The fact that one person committed a terrible act does not mean that other Afghans now pose a threat,” he said.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe told the BBC’s US partner CBS News that the suspect had worked with the CIA in Afghanistan.

The BBC’s Afghan Service spoke to a soldier from Lakanwal’s former military unit, the Kandahar Strike Force (KSF).

The soldier said he was put through a screening to enter the unit that took about three to four weeks and included a recommendation by a senior KSF officer and a “call history check” of his mobile device.

If the candidate passes that stage then they may be sent for security screening conducted by the US, which included collecting biometric data from the applicant.

The Afghan service confirmed the soldier’s account by speaking to a KSF unit commander, who also confirmed the soldier’s identity and said that a criminal record check was also part of the screening process.