The shooting of two West Virginia National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C., by an Afghan national brought here under Operation Allies Welcome (OAW) put a harsh spotlight on the politicians who opposed tightening the program’s vetting process.
At the top of that list: New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.
The horrific murder of 20-year-old Guardsman Spec. Sarah Beckstrom pushed questions about the Biden administration’s handling of immigrants from war-torn Afghanistan on the front page. But the issue is hardly new.
In September 2021, just weeks after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Senate considered an amendment by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) that would have tightened screening requirements for the tens of thousands of Afghans being rushed through the OAW program.
The amendment failed on a 50-50 vote. Both New Hampshire Democratic senators opposed it. Shaheen led the opposition against it.
“Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, argued the amendment was unnecessary, saying the evacuees were already being properly vetted and it merely blocked badly needed benefits for those in dire need of help,” The New York Times reported at the time.
The man accused of last week’s killings—identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal—entered the U.S. in September 2021 through that same emergency process. According to multiple news outlets, he passed several layers of screening, including biometric checks, counterterrorism database reviews, and additional background checks as part of his later successful asylum application.
The question is whether he was vetted as someone who could be trusted, not on the battlefields of Afghanistan, but in the neighborhoods of Bellingham, Wash.
Lakanwal was one of more than 190,000 Afghans brought into the United States since the withdrawal—more than the combined populations of Manchester and Nashua. And Shaheen has repeatedly argued that number should be larger.
In 2022, Shaheen released a 40-page report blasting the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) system as too slow and too restrictive. Her conclusion: The problem wasn’t insufficient vetting, but insufficient access to permanent status.
“I’m issuing this special report to detail why the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa program matters and how we can better support our Afghan partners,” Shaheen said at the time. “We’ve made important strides to improve the program, but… we have much further to go.”
Shaheen’s report mentions “vetting” only four times, each in the context of insisting that existing checks were adequate and should not be tightened.
But even then, multiple inspector general reports warned the opposite.
“The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General documented problems with vetting Afghans admitted to the United States in the fall of 2021,” an IG report said, noting the discovery of two evacuees later deemed national security threats. Others had obtained fraudulent documentation, and several U.S. citizens were criminally charged with falsifying SIV paperwork.
Another IG report found that “DHS had not vetted Afghan evacuees against DOD tactical data before paroling them. The FBI has flagged at least 50 paroled Afghan evacuees as ‘potentially significant security concerns.” As of July 2024, the FBI had not informed Congress that it knew their whereabouts.
While Shaheen was arguing against new restrictions, other lawmakers—most prominently Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)—warned of exactly the failures now under renewed scrutiny.
“I spent years calling attention to the weak vetting standards in Operation Allies Welcome, despite considerable pushback from the Biden administration and many of my colleagues in Congress,” Grassley told the New York Post.
One of the Democrats pushing back hardest was Shaheen, who has consistently insisted the system was “thorough,” and who has lobbied for broader, faster entry for Afghan nationals, including large numbers of military-aged men.
Despite Democratic criticism of Republicans who described parts of the SIV pipeline as “unvetted,” Biden administration officials later confirmed that some evacuees did not receive the required screenings.
In Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings—where Shaheen is the ranking member—Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted some Afghans were not vetted to program standards before boarding evacuation flights. Some “were allowed on U.S. planes unvetted,” he testified.
Mayorkas said those individuals were “screened and vetted while in flight” and placed in enforcement or removal proceedings as needed.
That reassurance now appears less convincing.
This week, the New York Post reported that more than 5,000 Afghan evacuees brought to the U.S. after the withdrawal were flagged for “national security” issues in Department of Homeland Security data.
The case of Lakanwal, who was initially paroled into the country, later granted asylum, and ultimately accused of shooting two American service members, has become a flashpoint in the debate over whether those security concerns were ignored.
Investigators now believe Lakanwal may have become radicalized after arriving in the U.S., according to DHS officials, who say his post-arrival activities and associations are now under review.
But the broader policy question remains unchanged: whether the massive Afghan influx in 2021 and 2022 was screened as thoroughly as Americans were assured it was.
Shaheen, for her part, has stood firmly on the side of expanding the program, opposing efforts to impose tighter restrictions, and repeatedly arguing the U.S. should bring in more Afghan nationals—not fewer.
And with a dead National Guardsman in Washington, DC, critics say the consequences of those decisions are now, tragically, on full display.
