A Department of Homeland Security review has found that the Biden administration failed to properly vet thousands of Afghan refugees seeking asylum after the 2021 US military withdrawal from Afghanistan. The audit of 678 randomly selected applications discovered that 40 per cent contained errors, with particularly concerning gaps in security screening that may have allowed individuals with potential terrorism links to enter the country undetected.

The report identified 303 missed aliases across the files, 23 applications with missing security checks, and two cases where terrorism-related inadmissibility was not identified during processing. The flaws stemmed primarily from incomplete documentation and asylum officers failing to recognise spelling variations or aliases, though the investigation found no evidence that a 2023 court settlement expediting decisions for 20,000 Afghan evacuees made the problem worse. Republican lawmakers have highlighted the findings as a national security concern, pointing to subsequent arrests of Afghan refugees allegedly involved in plotting terrorist attacks and shooting incidents.