In the Biden administration's supposedly "humane" policies toward immigration and asylum seekers — the same ones that have turned the U.S.-Mexico border into a deadly and violent mess of lawlessness that benefits only drug cartels and human traffickers — officials are also taking a softer position toward certain Taliban-affiliated individuals from Afghanistan who wish to come to the United States.
After the "most successful airlift in history" one year ago that saw 13 U.S. service members killed in an ISIS-K suicide bombing on August 26, 2021 and planeloads of unvetted Afghan refugees flown out of Kabul last summer, Biden wants to bring more Afghans to the United States. Including some with ties to the Taliban.
Back in June, Biden's Department of Homeland Security and State Department unveiled new exemptions — via "congressionally provided discretionary authority" — to allow more Afghans to qualify for immigration benefits from the U.S. — asylum, refugee status, and Special Immigrant Visas (SIV).
According to a report from the Inspectors General of the Department of Defense, Department of State, and U.S. Agency for International Development, these exemptions would apply on a case-by-case basis to individuals who "would otherwise be barred from the United States."
Complaining about "'broad' terrorism-related inadmissibility grounds," the report explains that the Biden administration is waiving those inadmissibility grounds in order to allow exemptions for three groups of Afghans: "individuals who worked as civil servants under the Taliban; individuals who supported U.S. military interests, including participation in resistance movements against the Taliban or the Soviet army during specified periods; and individuals who provided only certain limited material support to the Taliban or other designated terrorist organizations."
At the same time the exemptions to admissibility were implemented, Biden's DHS issued a release repeating its objections to "overly broad applications of terrorism-related inadmissibility grounds (TRIG) in our immigration law," restrictions put in place to protect the U.S. homeland from individuals who are connected to terror organizations that wish America and her citizens harm.
The same DHS release explained the vetting potential immigrants other prohibited from entering the U.S. would undergo:
All Afghans, including those considered for one of these exemptions, undergo a multi-layered, rigorous screening and vetting process conducted by intelligence, law enforcement, and counterterrorism professionals from the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and State, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), and additional intelligence community partners. Only individuals who clear these comprehensive security checks can be considered for an exemption.
That all sounds good, but this is the same administration that is pouring millions of taxpayer dollars into aid packages for Afghanistan while claiming that the Taliban — which controls nearly every facet of Afghan life — is not benefiting from any of that aid.
And, lest we forget, the Biden administration has caught dozens of individuals on U.S. terror watch lists illegally crossing into the country through the supposedly "closed" U.S.-Mexico border — while an unknown number of the hundreds of thousands of reported "got-aways" were also on terrorist databases. Some of those watch list-flagged individuals were released into the U.S. only to be scooped up by authorities days or even weeks later.
Evidently, the same administration that claims the southern border is closed and secure is also properly vetting Taliban associates for potential admission into the United States — after failing to vet most of the refugees airlifted out of Afghanistan one year ago — and Americans are just supposed to take the Biden administration's word for it that any previously disqualifying ties to terrorists aren't serious enough to warrant concern.
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