The federal review of Afghan asylum files tied to Operation Allies Welcome has sparked fresh concern after inspectors found serious gaps in documentation and vetting. The audit points to missing aliases, incomplete security checks, and a process that appears to have moved too fast for its own good, raising questions about how much risk slipped through the cracks.
Federal inspectors said they found one or more documentation or vetting errors in 40% of the 678 Afghan asylum applications they sampled. That is not a tiny bookkeeping issue, either, since the report says the mistakes could have kept USCIS from seeing information that might have changed whether some applicants were eligible for asylum in the first place.
The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General released the report on Sept. 23, looking at applications filed by Afghan nationals brought in under the Biden administration’s evacuation effort after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The findings included 303 missing aliases, 23 missing security checks, and more than 150 additional documentation problems, along with two cases involving applicants who may have been barred on terrorism-related grounds.
That part alone turns the whole issue into something bigger than a simple records problem. If names are missing, checks are skipped, or files are left incomplete, then the system is not just messy, it is vulnerable.
The scrutiny has only grown because Operation Allies Welcome has already been tied to a string of high-profile arrests involving Afghan nationals admitted under the program. Those cases have kept the spotlight on whether the rush to evacuate people during the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal came at the expense of basic security discipline.
DHS has responded sharply, saying the report shows the Biden administration “dangerously mismanaged” the program. The department also pointed to a lawsuit settlement that required USCIS to process 90% of asylum applications within 150 days, arguing that the deadline pushed the agency toward speed instead of a deeper look at each file.
One striking detail in the audit is how many aliases never made it into the records. The report says hundreds of aliases were not properly captured, and one applicant had 124 known aliases, which says a lot about how important clean documentation is when national security is on the line.
The report also said missed FBI name checks made up nearly 60% of the absent security checks it found. That kind of lapse matters because a name check is one of the most basic ways to catch red flags before a case moves ahead.
Two applications drew extra attention because of possible terrorism-related concerns. In one case, paperwork showing the government’s review was missing completely, and in another, supervisors started the approval process but never finished it, leaving the record with no clear proof that the review was actually completed.
Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies said the inspector general’s findings back up what critics have been warning since the chaotic 2021 Kabul evacuation. He called the 40% error rate “alarming” and said the report makes the vetting that was promised look thin, rushed, and far less serious than it should have been.
He also pointed to the way evacuees were moved through temporary hubs in third countries before being admitted to the United States. In his view, once those flights left the ground, the United States had already boxed itself into resettling people it could no longer realistically send elsewhere.
The audit ended with five recommendations aimed at tightening USCIS handling of these asylum files. Those recommendations focus on better alias documentation, properly recorded security checks, and stronger oversight of adjudication records, while USCIS said it agreed with all five.
Even with that agreement, the report leaves behind an uneasy picture of a system that was supposed to be orderly but instead looks stretched, rushed, and full of holes. When a file shows missing names, unfinished reviews, and security steps that never got locked down, the concern does not fade quietly in the background.
