Imagine arriving in a new country with literally zero proof of who you are. No passport, no birth certificate, not even a scrap of paper with your name on it. Now imagine tens of thousands of people doing exactly that – and the government waving them through anyway.
That’s not some dystopian movie plot. That, according to incoming border czar Tom Homan, is exactly what happened during the chaotic Afghanistan pullout in 2021.
The Biggest National Security Failure Ever?
Tom Homan doesn’t mince words. In a recent television interview he called the vetting process for Afghan evacuees “the biggest national security failure in the history of the nation.” And when a guy who ran ICE for years says something like that, people tend to listen.
The numbers alone are staggering. More than 190,000 Afghan nationals have been resettled in the United States since the fall of Kabul. Many came through a rushed program initially called Operation Allies Welcome – later quietly rebranded to Enduring Welcome after the problems started piling up.
But here’s the part that keeps border hawks up at night: a huge percentage of those individuals arrived with little or no verifiable documentation.
When “No ID” Became the Norm
Think about your own life for a second. Try boarding a domestic flight without ID. Try opening a bank account. Try doing pretty much anything official. Now picture an entire evacuation where lacking identification was basically standard operating procedure.
A few years ago, the Department of Homeland Security’s own Inspector General dropped a report that should have set off every alarm bell in Washington. They audited nearly 89,000 evacuee records. What they found was jaw-dropping:
- Over 11,000 people listed their birthday as January 1 – the universal default date when the real one is unknown
- Nearly 8,000 had missing or completely invalid travel document numbers
- More than 36,000 records used something vaguely labeled “facilitation document” – a term even Customs and Border Protection admitted they couldn’t properly define
In plain English? We let tens of thousands of people in on paperwork that ranged from dubious to nonexistent.
“We’re going to count on the Taliban to tell us who the good guys and bad guys are? Certainly not.”
Tom Homan, incoming Border Czar
From Evacuation Chaos to Real-World Consequences
Fast-forward to last week. Two West Virginia National Guard members are ambushed outside a training center. One killed, one clinging to life. The suspected shooter? A 29-year-old Afghan national who came in through that very same program.
Suddenly those dry government reports don’t feel so academic anymore.
The response was swift. Visa issuance for Afghan passport holders was immediately paused. Asylum decisions put on ice. And the incoming administration has already signaled this is just the beginning of a massive review – and likely reversal – of the entire resettlement pipeline.
Why Proper Vetting Actually Matters
I’ve covered immigration policy for years, and there’s always this tension between compassion and security. Nobody reasonable wants to leave genuine allies behind to face retaliation. But rushing people through without basic identity verification isn’t compassion – it’s recklessness.
In third-world conflict zones, robust record-keeping often doesn’t exist. Birth certificates get lost or were never issued. Passports are forged or sold on the black market. When the evacuation is happening under fire with Taliban checkpoints on the road to the airport, the incentive to lie about your background skyrockets.
And yet the decision was made – at the highest levels – to prioritize speed over certainty.
The Gotaway Problem Makes It Even Worse
Here’s the part that really keeps me up at night. At least with the Afghan evacuees, we have some biometric data – fingerprints, photographs, whatever paperwork they did carry. With the estimated two million-plus “gotaways” who crossed the southern border illegally and evaded capture entirely? We have literally nothing.
No name. No photo. No fingerprints. Nothing.
Homan puts the total illegal entries during the last administration at around 10.5 million – not counting hundreds of thousands more who came through legal ports via parole programs for specific nationalities. That’s a population larger than 41 individual states.
How the New Administration Is Already Changing Course
The contrast couldn’t be clearer. Recent Customs and Border Protection numbers show the sixth straight month of effectively zero “catch-and-release” at the border. Apprehensions on the southwest border are down roughly 95% from the peak.
In practice that means:
- Everyone encountered is either removed or detained
- No more mass parole into the interior
- Visa programs from high-risk countries are being paused or terminated
- Asylum claims from certain nations are on hold pending full re-vetting capability
It’s a complete 180 from the previous “come one, come all” approach.
Lessons We Can’t Afford to Forget
Look, humanitarian impulses are good. Helping people who helped us is the right thing to do. But doing it in a way that imports unverifiable risk onto American streets isn’t noble – it’s negligent.
The Afghanistan evacuation will be studied for decades as a case study in how not to balance compassion with security. The warnings were there from the beginning. Inspector General reports, whistleblowers, field agents screaming that standards were being gutted.
And now we’re living with the consequences.
The new administration has made it clear: never again. Proper vetting isn’t cruelty – it’s the bare minimum responsibility a government owes its citizens.
Whether that lesson sticks beyond the current political moment remains to be seen. But if recent events are any indication, the American people have run out of patience for experiments in open-border idealism.
Security and compassion don’t have to be enemies. But when one is sacrificed entirely for the other, everyone loses – especially the truly vulnerable people who actually deserve our help.
