In September, President Biden botched the Afghan withdrawal, which cost 13 U.S. servicemembers their lives during a suicide bombing. The Biden administration compounded its errors by recklessly allowing tens of thousands of unvetted Afghans to get on planes headed to the United States, while stranding an unknown number of Americans and lawful permanent residents (LPRs) in Afghanistan. As I wrote in Newsweek back on September 8, “The Biden administration policy seems to be to get as many here as quickly as possible and sort out the details later. What could possibly go wrong?”
Sadly, and predictably, a lot has gone wrong. Right away, a convicted rapist was found on one of the planes that landed at Washington Dulles International Airport, about an hour’s drive from the White House. Because these Afghans are visa-less, President Biden’s secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) allowed them into the country through an unlawful categorical use of his parole authority.
With parole, these aliens immediately became eligible for a work permit, known as an employment authorization document (EAD). As I scooped back on September 9, DHS issued the work permits before the lengthy national security and background checks could be run. The Biden political team told career staff they would “resolve” derogatory information after the fact without establishing any detailed plan for how that would play out.
By September 16, Axios produced a state-by-state breakdown of where the first roughly 37,000 unvetted Afghans were going within the interior of the country. The state of Montana received 75 Afghans in the first wave of resettlement. One of the unvetted Afghan parolees who ended up in Montana is 19-year-old Zabihullah Mohmand. Last week, Mohmand was charged with violently raping an 18-year-old girl in a hotel room. Mohmand’s arraignment is scheduled for November 1 and it appears that he is being detained in police custody at this time.
I do not know what potential derogatory information might have come up in the course of Mohmand’s national security and background checks, but this tragic alleged crime is the predictable byproduct of allowing unvetted aliens to roam the interior of the United States. Instead of feeling some moral culpability in putting Mohmand in a position to commit this crime, multiple DHS sources tell me that the Biden political leadership team has decided that they will not revoke Mohmand’s EAD at this time. This is an absolutely baffling, and indefensible, decision as the process of rescinding an EAD is not complicated.
Since taking office, the Biden administration has claimed it offers a “compassionate” immigration policy. It is becoming ever clearer that the compassion is only for the aliens, including those charged with committing heinous crimes against Americans.