Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has stated numerous times—publicly and before Congress—that “all non-citizen migrants are vetted before being released into the United States.” So, when you hear the term “vetted,” what does that imply to you? Dictionary.com defines “vetting” as, “noun; the act or process of appraising or checking a person or thing for suitability.”
Again, I ask you, when you hear the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security state emphatically that all “non-citizen migrants,” and specifically those that choose to violate U.S. law (8 USC 1325) have been vetted before being released into the U.S., what do you believe this means?
As standard process, when any illegal alien is apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol agents or Customs and Border Protection officers, the alien is asked to provide his or her name, date of birth and nationality. A photograph and digital fingerprints are also captured. If the alien has any form of identification, that is also evaluated however, there is no quick way to validate any document that was not issued by a US entity. The information collected is run against several U.S. databases, to include but not limited to, the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and the Terrorist Screening Data Set (TSDS) commonly known as the National Watchlist.
If you are like many Americans I have spoken with, you assume that DHS standard records checks significantly reduce the possibility that the individual poses any public safety threat. But here is a simple scenario to consider. Let’s say that a fairly well known, former Afghanistan military general and former advisor to the president of Afghanistan was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol while entering the U.S. illegally. As is standard process, the basic biographical information he provided as well as his fingerprints and photograph were run against the standard U.S. databases. One would expect that the records checks would reveal something about this Afghanistan general and alert agents and officers about who they have in front of them, right?
Wrong. This scenario played out on Oct. 10 in San Diego. The records checks that Secretary Mayorkas refers to as “vetting” came up empty. Nothing, zero, zilch. Based on Secretary Mayorkas’s highly touted vetting, this “non-citizen migrant” was just another person from Afghanistan, illegally entering the U.S. by crossing the border from Mexico illegally.
Fortunately, this former Afghan general and advisor to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was ultimately identified—but not by any U.S. databases. He was identified by an administrative employee who just happened to be working in the Border Patrol processing center. As luck would have it, this employee had done research on this specific Afghan general as part of a project while in college just a few years ago, and he recognized his face. When pulled aside and questioned, the former general confirmed his identity.
This dynamic played out again just a few days later. A second former Afghan general was apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol and again, records checks revealed nothing about him. He voluntarily offered his real identity.
Why should we care? Secretary Mayorkas knows the limits of routine records checks and that his statements about “vetting” are misleading, yet he continues to tell America that the massive illegal immigration is not a threat because “non-citizen migrants are vetted.” Real vetting includes a face-to-face interview with personnel trained to detect deception and verify any information provided by the subject.
I am left believing that Secretary Mayorkas is knowingly and intentionally misleading America, but that is a conversation for another day. Today, I simply what you to understand the truth and the public safety implications associated with the massive illegal immigration into our Nation.
We know that 3,201,144 illegal aliens were processed by CBP in fiscal year 2023. How many threats were missed? That’s something we don’t know.
Additionally, Secretary Mayorkas refuses to acknowledge the threats associated with the nearly 1.7 million illegal entries that U.S. Border Patrol documented as “gotaways” under the Biden administration.
Americans deserve to know the whole truth. We will all know some day.