Just one of a trio of Afghan migrants arrested in recent high-profile cases was on the government’s classified terror watchlist of 18,000 people, an intelligence source tells The Post – suggesting two of them were radicalized here in the US as the nation’s spies race to identify potential threats.

National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent jolted House lawmakers at a Dec. 11 hearing when he revealed his agency had identified “around 18,000 known and suspected terrorists that the Biden administration let come into our country” over a four-year period.  

Since then, US officials alarmed by last month’s shooting of National Guard troops in DC have been combing through the list to identify potential threats, while analyzing how people recently charged with serious crimes made it into the country in the first place.

Among those who got through was Jaan Shah Safi, who came to the US in 2021 under the Biden Administration’s Operation Allies Welcome and who is accused of shipping guns to ISIS forces in his home country.

He is one of “nearly 2,000 Afghans that have ties to known or suspected terrorists,” according to an official in Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s office.

NCTC “sent intelligence about Jaan Shah Saffi over to DHS/ICE and will continue to flag individuals with known or suspected terrorist ties to law enforcement agencies,” the official said.

“While NCTC has identified thousands of individuals with terrorist ties, other Afghans (including National Guard attacker Lakanwal) are radicalized here in the U.S.,” the official told The Post.

Rahmanullah Lakanwal, accused of ambushing two National Guard members in Washington DC, killing one and leaving the second critically wounded, was not on the list, the DNI official said. He is now charged with first-degree murder.

Neither was another Afghan man, Mohammad Dawood Alokozay of Texas, who faces federal and state charges for allegedly threatening during a group chat to carry out a suicide attack.

All three arrests drew national attention after Lakanwal allegedly opened fire in downtown DC, killing West Virginia National Guard troop Sarah Beckstrom and severely wounding Andrew Wolfe, who in the weeks since has been experiencing a “miraculous” recovery.

Safi’s presence on the list indicates the US Government had information that he posed a threat. It wasn’t immediately clear when he was put on the list. The Department of Homeland Security announced his arrest in Virginia on Dec. 3 and said he had “provided support to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria-Khorasan (ISIS-K)” and also ” and “provided weapons to his father who is a commander of a militia group in Afghanistan.”

“Safi is an illegal alien terrorist who entered the U.S. on September 8, 2021, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, under the Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome.  He applied for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) but his application was terminated once Secretary Noem ended TPS for Afghans. He remains in ICE custody pending removal proceedings,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told The Post.

Safi, 48, previously held a high-level national security position in Afghanistan.

Before coming to the US, he served as the deputy director of the National Directorate of Security, the former Afghan government’s version of the CIA, in the province of Nangarhar. However some top former Afghan security officials have questioned his arrest and pointed to his efforts to fight extremists opposed to the former U.S.-backed Afghan government.

The 18,000 people with suspected terror ties are included in the Intelligence Community’s terror database, called TIDE for Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment. It catalogues “all information the U.S.
government possesses related to the identities of individuals” known or suspected of terror activities, according to a DNI fact sheet.

Gabbard told Fox News “Saturday in America” on Dec. 13 that whistleblowers have come forward with claims officials cut corners of the vetting process during the press to evacuate Afghan allies.

More than 100,000 came here during the operation.

“They [whistleblowers] were told, ‘Hurry up, don’t do the thorough vetting that you normally do because we have to hurry up and get these people into the United States,’” Gabbard said.

“I am for more scrutiny on the people who came at the time,” Senate Homeland Security Chairman Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told The Post. “And really many of these people would have been better off staying in Afghanistan and founding their country,” he said, reaching for a US historical analogy.

“It’s always tough when a country gets started. Just to say, ‘It’s tough, I’m going to leave and give up my country and go somewhere else.’ In 1812, the British were still attacking us. We didn’t go to France. We stuck it out and fought for our country,” he said.