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The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General just dropped a report that should make every American sit up straight. The audit (OIG‑26‑26) reviewed asylum files tied to Operation Allies Welcome and found adjudication or vetting errors in roughly 40% of the sampled cases. That is not a typo. This is about broken paperwork that could hide dangerous people, and it exposes a string of failures in how we processed Afghan evacuees after the chaotic withdrawal.
What the DHS OIG found
The OIG reviewed a sample of 678 asylum applications submitted by Afghan evacuees resettled under Operation Allies Welcome. The results were stark: hundreds of missing name variants or aliases (reported as 303), dozens of missing security checks (reported as 23), and more than 150 other documentation problems. The OIG warned those errors “may have missed opportunities to potentially link names provided by applicants to derogatory information,” which sounds like a polite way of saying we might have let threats slip through the cracks.
Why this matters for national security
This isn’t bureaucratic nitpicking. Missing aliases and skipped security checks aren’t harmless clerical mistakes when some of these same arrivals have been tied to violent plots and attacks. We already know of Afghans arrested for planning mass shootings, providing support to ISIS‑K, and one accused of a deadly attack in Washington, D.C. The audit ties directly to the real risk of missed links to derogatory intelligence. In plain English: sloppy files can become missed threats.
Who should answer for this?
USCIS leadership — Joseph B. Edlow, Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — has said the agency agrees with the OIG’s recommendations and will work on fixes. That’s the proper first step. But words aren’t enough. Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Congress should demand clear timelines, benchmarks, and public reporting on corrections. Republicans warned about security gaps in the resettlement process. Now that an inspector general confirms those warnings, accountability is due, not applause for “thorough vetting.”
Conclusion: Fix the process, protect Americans
The OIG report gives a roadmap: improve alias recording, finish security checks before closing files, set error‑rate benchmarks, and document how derogatory leads are handled. These are fixable administrative steps. We can be a welcoming nation and still protect our citizens. If the Biden administration wants to prove it can do both, it should stop treating national security like an inconvenient footnote and start following the simple rule: do the work right. No one’s asking for perfection — just competence. Is that too much to ask?
