Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has dropped a bombshell that could shake confidence in our nation’s security vetting processes.
Just The News reported that nearly 2,000 Afghan nationals, admitted to the U.S. after the chaotic 2021 military withdrawal from Afghanistan, have ties to terrorism, according to DNI Tulsi Gabbard, sparking urgent calls to re-evaluate the screening failures of the previous administration.
Let’s rewind to August 2021, when nearly 200,000 Afghan evacuees were brought into the country under the Biden administration’s watch.
Early red flags emerged with a January 2022 Department of Defense Inspector General report, which revealed that many of these evacuees slipped through without proper scrutiny.
The report noted that the National Counter-Terrorism Center failed to utilize all available DoD data before these individuals reached American soil, a glaring oversight that left potential risks undetected.
Personnel at the National Ground Intelligence Center even flagged derogatory information on some Afghans believed to be in the U.S., yet the gaps persisted.
Fast forward to a recent House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Thursday, where Secretary Kristi Noem underscored the serious national security concerns tied to these lapses.
The very next morning, Gabbard took to Fox News to lay bare the scale of the problem, stating, “The vast majority of them were not properly vetted,” and highlighting that at least 2,000 are known or suspected to have terror connections.
That’s not just a statistic—it’s a wake-up call for anyone who thought border security was a partisan talking point and not a bipartisan necessity.
Adding fuel to the fire, a shocking incident on Thanksgiving eve near the White House saw Afghan evacuee Rahmanullah Lakanwal allegedly shoot two National Guard members, killing one.
While Lakanwal hasn’t been charged with terrorism yet, the investigation continues, and both Gabbard and Noem have labeled the attack as terror-related, raising the stakes of this debate.
President Donald Trump, responding to last month’s D.C. shooting, has since vowed to pause migration from certain nations, including Afghanistan, until safeguards are airtight.
Gabbard didn’t stop at sounding the alarm; she confirmed that the National Counterterrorism Center, DHS, and FBI will work together to re-vet every Afghan admitted under the prior administration’s flawed process.
Border Czar Tom Homan echoed this commitment, saying, “We’re going to re-vet them because we don’t think the last administration properly vetted them,” promising a return to rigorous standards.
With threats from groups like al Qaeda and ISIS still looming, as Gabbard emphasized, this isn’t just bureaucratic cleanup—it’s a matter of protecting the homeland from radical ideologies that exploit weak policies.
