What happened
A recent audit by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General found a significant error rate in the asylum files of Afghan evacuees resettled in the United States. The review of 678 randomly selected files revealed errors in 269 of them, including missed aliases, missing security checks, and unresolved records.
The errors found in the audit include 303 missed aliases across 169 files, 23 missing security checks, and 115 other documentation issues. In some cases, asylum officers failed to recognize spelling variations of applicants' names, which could have prevented their names from being matched against information in subsequent security checks.
The inspector general's office also identified two cases involving potential terrorism-related inadmissibility concerns. However, it did not determine whether the errors actually affected an applicant's eligibility for asylum or resulted in a security threat.
The findings have raised concerns that immigration officials may have missed opportunities to identify potentially derogatory information. The report emphasized that most of the problems involved missed aliases or incomplete documentation, which could compromise the integrity of the immigration files later used for immigration administration and enforcement.
