President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the extension and redesignation of temporary amnesty status for nearly 18,000 Afghans living in the United States despite their initial entry being plagued by document vetting failures.
On Friday, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced the extension and redesignation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for close to 18,000 Afghans who were admitted to the U.S. after the withdrawal of U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan in August 2021.
The massive resettlement operation brought nearly 100,000 Afghans to American communities in a matter of months — often without having been interviewed in person.
WATCH — Sec. Blinken: Most Afghans Not Vetted Before Getting on Planes
US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations“Today’s announcement to extend and redesignate TPS for Afghanistan allows us to continue to offer safety and protection to Afghan nationals who are unable to return to their country,” Mayorkas said in a statement. “DHS will continue to support Afghan nationals through this temporary form of humanitarian relief.”
Specifically, the TPS announcement will allow more than 3,000 Afghans to retain their amnesty status to remain in the U.S. while another roughly 14,600 Afghans will become eligible for the amnesty status.
Mayorkas was initially able to resettle the tens of thousands of Afghans across all 50 states thanks to Republicans and Democrats in Congress repeatedly approving funding for the operation.
Now, many of those same lawmakers want to give Afghans green cards, but the effort has failed on multiple occasions.
The resettlement operation has been plagued with reported vetting failures since its inception when Afghans first started arriving at Dulles International Airport in Virginia in 2021.
In April, a former Department of Defense (DOD) official revealed to Congress that some Afghans were resettled in the U.S. before they were found to have been involved in placing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan to kill American troops.
WATCH: DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Admits Failure to Check Afghan Migrants
C-SPANIn 2021, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) requested information about the number of Afghans who sought entry to the U.S. who were listed on the federal government’s “No Fly List” because of their ties to Islamic terrorism. Biden’s top agency officials have refused to disclose the total.
In September 2022, the DHS Inspector General (IG) issued a bombshell report detailing how the Biden administration brought Afghans to the U.S. who were “not fully vetted” and could “pose a risk to national security.”
Similarly, in February 2022, a DOD IG report revealed that Biden’s agencies failed to properly vet Afghans who arrived in the U.S. and that about 50 Afghans were flagged for “significant security concerns” after their resettlement.
Most of the unvetted Afghans flagged for possible terrorism ties, the DOD IG report states, have since disappeared into American communities. The report noted that as of September 17, 2021, only three of 31 Afghans flagged with specific “derogatory information” could be located.
In August 2022, Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) detailed allegations from a whistleblower who claimed that the Biden administration knowingly resettled almost 400 Afghans in the U.S. who were listed as “potential threats” in federal databases and urged staff to cut corners in the vetting process.
In May 2022, a Project Veritas report alleged that the Biden administration resettled Afghans listed on the federal government’s “Terrorism Watch List” in American communities:
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
