40% Error Rate: DHS Audit Finds Afghan Evacuee Vetting Files Riddled with Mistakes
September 30, 2026 · Frisian News
A DHS Office of Inspector General audit found processing errors in 40 percent of a random sample of asylum files for Afghan evacuees resettled under Operation Allies Welcome. The inspector general said USCIS may have missed opportunities to identify derogatory information on applicants.
Forty percent of a random sample of asylum files for Afghan evacuees contained at least one processing error, a DHS Office of Inspector General audit released September 23, 2026 found. Investigators drew 678 files at random from 13,682 adjudicated applications filed by Afghans who entered the United States through Operation Allies Welcome, the resettlement program created after the 2021 withdrawal. They found errors in 269 of those files.
The OIG audit identified 303 missed aliases across 169 files, 23 missing security checks, 45 cases where potential matches were left unresolved, and 115 other documentation problems. The inspector general concluded that the pattern "suggest U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services may have missed opportunities to potentially link names provided by applicants to derogatory information."
Two files involved individuals potentially inadmissible on terrorism-related grounds. In one, required paperwork was absent from the file, preventing a second-level authority from approving the analysis. In the other, the paperwork was present and signed by senior officials, but the box indicating whether the analysis was approved or rejected was left blank. The inspector general did not determine whether either error resulted in an actual security threat.
USCIS director Joseph Edlow agreed with all five of the inspector general's recommendations. He argued that the errors occurred alongside established screening and security checks that minimize their impact, and called the agency's vetting procedures "well-established and thorough." The 40 percent error rate appeared in the same report.
The audit opened after USCIS employees told the inspector general that a September 2023 court settlement in Ahmed v. DHS, which required the agency to decide 90 percent of OAW asylum applications within 150 days, was forcing officers to rush vetting. The inspector general found no statistically significant increase in the error rate after the settlement took effect. Errors per file were 0.718 before the settlement and 0.716 after it, and the share of files with any error fell from 41 percent to 38 percent, according to a review of the audit by AfghanEvac.org.
This is the third DHS OIG report on Operation Allies Welcome screening. A September 2022 report found that some evacuees were admitted without full vetting checks. A May 2024 report described a fragmented process for resolving derogatory information on OAW parolees. The 2026 audit covers only the asylum adjudication stage inside the United States.
Operation Allies Welcome brought more than 70,000 Afghans to the United States after the 2021 withdrawal, according to AOL News. Reporting by The Post, cited by AOL News, said in November 2025 that more than 5,000 of those arrivals had been flagged for national security concerns. That same month, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national resettled through the program, allegedly shot two National Guard soldiers near the White House, killing one and severely injuring the other.
USCIS told the inspector general that its own quality assurance reviews had "unequivocally determined that any missed aliases did not impact the adjudicative outcome of any case" in its study period samples, according to the AfghanEvac.org analysis of the report. The inspector general did not dispute that finding but did not independently re-run the missed name variants to verify it.
Published September 30, 2026 · Frisian News