The chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has resulted in a potential new national security threat. A group of Senate Republicans sent a letter to the Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin demanding answers on how Afghan evacuees are being vetted, following reports of hundreds of evacuees walking off U.S. military bases where they are being housed. This is on top of reports of some Afghan refugees attacking U.S. soldiers or committing other crimes. The U.S. is currently housing some 53,000 Afghan refugees on 8 military bases.
Jeffrey Addicott, terrorism law professor and director of the Warrior Defense Project at St. Mary's Law School, says this is just the latest consequence of the botched Afghanistan pullout. "We have thousands of people that weren't even on our Visa list to come into this country that were herded onto these airplanes and brought into this country anyway," he tells KTRH. "The vetting process for this type of situation should take about a year."
At the same time tens of thousands of unvetted evacuees are being brought to the U.S., the Pentagon has left behind American citizens, Afghan interpreters, and others who wanted to come back. "Now these refugees are getting impatient on these military installations, or for whatever reason, they're simply not following our laws," says Addicott. "These people are thumbing their nose at their new home, and the rule of law that is established for people that want to live here."
Addicott warns most of these evacuees have lived under Sharia law most or all of their lives, so they will have a difficult time assimilating into American culture. "This is clearly troubling," he says. "You have to ask yourself the question, how many of these individuals are still pledging allegiance to radical Islamic extremism, and will they do harm in terms of real terrorism in this country?"
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