(José Niño, Headline USA) A new DHS Office of Inspector General report identified several screening and documentation problems in asylum cases involving Afghan evacuees admitted after the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The report examined how U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services handled asylum claims under Operation Allies Welcome. The audit reviewed a random sample of 678 cases from a universe of 13,682 completed asylum decisions involving Afghan evacuees.
Investigators found errors in 269 of the 678 files, producing a 40 percent error rate. The most common issue involved alternate names. Officials did not record 303 aliases across 169 files, meaning one quarter of the files reviewed omitted at least one known name variation.
The watchdog also reported 23 incomplete security checks, 45 unresolved records involving possible derogatory information, and 115 additional documentation problems. The audit included two cases with errors connected to possible terrorism related inadmissibility issues.
The report noted that these shortcomings could affect the government’s ability to identify relevant national security, criminal, or immigration information connected to an applicant. The inspector general stressed that incomplete files can also burden future officers conducting immigration decisions or enforcement actions.
“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, which in turn would compromise the integrity of alien registration file (A-File) contents that future users rely upon for immigration administration and enforcement activities,” the report states.
The audit does not conclude that USCIS granted asylum improperly in every flawed case. Rather, it identifies vulnerabilities in the processes used to capture aliases, complete required checks, resolve possible matches, and maintain accurate Alien Files.
“We found a 40 percent error rate in the adjudication of Operation Allies Welcome asylum files we reviewed.”
One concern involved the complexity of the cases. The DHS report describes one applicant with 124 aliases and another whose common name produced more than 1,500 potential database matches. Such volume can make careful screening difficult, but it does not remove USCIS’s responsibility to complete the required review.
The report also reviewed whether a 2023 settlement in Ahmed v. DHS increased mistakes by requiring USCIS to decide most Operation Allies Welcome asylum cases within 150 days. It found no statistically significant evidence that the settlement produced a higher error rate.
“We did not observe a statistically significant increase in error rate after the September 2023 DHS settlement agreement.”
USCIS accepted all five inspector general recommendations. The agency agreed to improve how officers identify aliases, document security checks and social media reviews, set quality standards, and retain electronic records. USCIS also said its broader vetting procedures “minimize the impact of these errors” and that the review did not establish that any errors changed an asylum decision.
The full DHS report can be found here.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
