U.S. Fails to Vet 40% of Afghans Admitted Under Biden, Including Terrorists Like DC Guardsmen Shoote...

Less than a year after a terrorist who entered the U.S. under a Biden administration program to help “vulnerable Afghans” shot two National Guard soldiers in Washington DC, a federal investigation reveals the government failed to properly screen an alarming 40% of the asylum candidates admitted under the risky initiative. Known as Operation Allies Welcome (OAW), the controversial program was launched to help Afghans resettle in the U.S. after the chaotic 2021 withdraw of American troops in the war-torn Islamic nation and thousands were not properly vetted. Among them was Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the 30-year-old Afghan national who ambushed and shot National Guardsmen near the White House in late November, killing a 20-year-old specialist, seriously injuring a 24-year-old sergeant and wounding two others in the attack.

On the day of the shooting, November 26, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed the “terrorist is one of thousands of unvetted Afghan nationals let into the country under the Biden Administration’s Operation Allies Welcome program.” Many on the left, including the establishment media, downplayed the information, insisting that the initiative helped susceptible Afghans, especially those targeted by the Taliban for having worked with allied forces. Under OAW around 97,000 refugees were evacuated from Afghanistan and granted a two-year parole that allowed them to apply for asylum. The DC shooter was among them. “The Biden Administration let this terrorist into the country as part of their Operation Allies Welcome program on September 8, 2021,” according to the DHS statement issued immediately after the attack. “This program let in thousands of unvetted Afghan nationals including terrorists into our country.” Lakanwal has been charged with first-degree murder while armed, assault with intent to kill while armed, and two counts of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence, in violation of the DC code.

It is unlikely that Lakanwal is the only terrorist welcomed into the country under Biden’s program, according to information disclosed in a distressing new report issued by the DHS Inspector General (IG). Big chunks of the document are redacted, presumably for national security reasons, but the message is clear; the government failed miserably to scrutinize unknown numbers of Afghans before admitting them into the U.S., creating a huge national security risk as the Lakanwal case proves. Investigators found a 40% failure rate in the vetting of asylum claims for Afghan nationals received under OAW, including candidates with known ties to terrorism. The DHS agency in charge of performing the vetting, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), oversees lawful immigration and asylum officers (AO) were supposed to use special tools such as FBI fingerprint checks, biometric matching and a case management system known as Global to screen Afghans. Incredibly, they missed a lot of red flags and although pertinent information is redacted in the report, enough is available to illustrate the serious failures.

“The prevalence and type of errors suggest U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services may have missed opportunities to potentially link names provided by applicants to derogatory information,” the DHS watchdog writes, adding that the lapse compromises the integrity of the alien registration file contents for future immigration administration and enforcement activities. During a random audit, investigators examined a sample of 678 applicants from a batch of 13,682 adjudicated Afghan evacuees who resettled in the U.S. The DHS IG identified 303 missed aliases, 23 missing security checks, 45 unresolved records and 115 other documentation issues. The missing security checks mean USCIS failed to run names against FBI and national security databases. The unresolved records show a failure to resolve potential matches to derogatory information such as national security concerns, criminal convictions and other misconduct that could impede asylum. “Most errors resulted from missed aliases or incomplete documentation, including two cases related to potential inadmissibility on terrorism-related grounds,” the report states. Some files had multiple missed aliases. Other errors involved an asylum officer failing to identify a spelling variation of a name or not reprinting and adding a document to a file.

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