The Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome program which allowed Afghans to enter the US, including the alleged National Guardsmen shooter, had deeply concerning flaws in its vetting process — and then failed to monitor the refugees properly once they were here, according to a pair of damning reports.

The flaws in the program, which Biden pushed through in 2021 in a bid to resettle tens of thousands of Afghans after the US withdrew troops from the country, were identified in two Department of Homeland Security Inspector General reports.

In an audit of the vetting process conducted in 2022, the Inspector General’s office found that DHS officers “did not always have critical data to properly screen, vet, or inspect the evacuees.”

“We determined some information used to vet evacuees through US Government databases, such as name, date of birth, identification number, and travel document data, was inaccurate, incomplete, or missing,” the audit states.

As a result, DHS paroled at least two Afghan nationals into the US who posed national security risks — including one evacuee who had been liberated from prison in Afghanistan by the Taliban in August 2021.

The identities of the evacuees, as well as further details about their backgrounds and the security risks they posed, were not in the published report.

Another review conducted by the Office of the Inspector General in 2024 also concluded that the systems in place to document the arrivals of incoming Afghans were plagued by data inaccuracies and glitches that would have made it difficult for immigration officials to pinpoint “biographic or criminal history data.”

In some cases, Afghans were assigned multiple identification numbers or their names were spelled incorrectly.

“[Immigration] personnel must have accurate information on individuals to ensure the integrity of the adjudication and enforcement processes,” the report found.

“Data errors may negatively impact USCIS and ICE staff’s ability to identify individuals quickly and accurately within the OAW population and appropriately connect individuals with accurate information such as biographic or criminal history data.”

Once the Afghans were in the US, the review also found there was no process in place to rigorously monitor when their parole dates were up.

“We found DHS does not have a process to monitor parole expiration for individual OAW parolees and has not designated a component to monitor their parole expiration. CBP, USCIS, and ICE officials uniformly believed this was not their responsibility,” the 2024 report stated.

The findings of both reports resurfaced after the feds confirmed Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the 29-year-old suspect in Wednesday’s shooting of two National Guard soldiers in Washington, DC, had come to the US under the program.

Under the Biden-era program, roughly 76,000 Afghans were evacuated and brought to the US after the chaotic withdrawal – including many who had worked alongside American troops and diplomats as interpreters and translators. 

Lakanwal, for his part, had worked in a special CIA-backed Afghan Army unit, according to officials.

The program that brought the suspect here has long faced intense scrutiny from Republican lawmakers and some government watchdogs over holes in the vetting process.

Just weeks after the hasty withdrawal, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) unveiled emails that claimed the Biden admin had authorized officials in Kabul to “err on the side of excess” by packing planes with evacuees – rather than vetting them.

In the wake of the DC shooting, the Trump administration blamed Biden-era officials for improperly vetting Lakanwal.

After his arrival in the US, the suspected shooter – who lives in Washington state with his wife and five children — applied for asylum in December last year. He was ultimately approved in April.

President Trump, for his part, has said his administration would “re-examine” all Afghans who came to the US during Biden’s presidency.

“If they can’t love our country, we don’t want them,” he said, adding that the shooting was “a crime against our entire nation.”

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services has since announced it would indefinitely stop processing all immigration requests for Afghan nationals pending a review of security and vetting protocols.