The Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday that its Office of the Inspector General found a 40 percent error rate in asylum adjudications under the Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome program for Afghans, a finding officials tied directly to national security risk.
Just The News reported that the inspector general review, released to the department last week, linked the error rate to a rushed timeline that left U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services missing chances to connect applicants’ alias names to information that could have made them ineligible for asylum.
The stakes are not abstract. The report described criminal offenders released into the country under the resettlement effort, and one Afghan national admitted through the program was arrested in Oklahoma last year for allegedly planning an Election Day terrorist attack on Americans.
Operation Allies Welcome was established in 2022 to admit Afghan refugees. Under the program, USCIS had to interview an Operation Allies Welcome asylum applicant within 45 days of filing, with no exceptions.
Pressure intensified after a 2023 settlement in Ahmed vs. DHS. That settlement directed USCIS to adjudicate 90 percent of Operation Allies Welcome asylum applications within 150 days.
DHS later received complaints that the settlement rushed application review. The inspector general report then examined how those deadlines played out in practice.
The Office of the Inspector General concluded that the rushed timeline produced a 40 percent error rate in the adjudication of Operation Allies Welcome asylum files.
Those errors mattered for screening. The report said USCIS missed opportunities to potentially link an applicant’s alias names to information that could have barred asylum.
In plain terms, speed crowded out the checks designed to catch disqualifying records before a grant of protection and release into the United States.
The inspector general report noted that many criminal illegal migrants were released into the country under the resettlement program. Conviction categories listed included lewd or lascivious acts with a minor, sexual battery, hit-and-run, drug possession, and kidnapping.
Absolute counts for how many people fell into those categories were not stated in the public summary available here. The categories themselves, however, sit at the center of the department’s security warning.
Separately, authorities in Oklahoma last year arrested an Afghan national admitted through the program. That person allegedly planned an Election Day terrorist attack on Americans. Investigators have not, in the material provided, released a fuller public case disposition beyond the arrest and the alleged plot.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin framed the report as proof that asylum rules must stay tight and that prior management failed basic procedure.
Mullin said:
"Our asylum system should be as strict as possible. If even one dangerous criminal or terrorist slips through and enters our country, it endangers countless American lives,"
He went further on the Biden-era handling of the Afghan program.
Mullin stated:
"The Biden Administration dangerously mismanaged the Operation Allies Welcome program, disregarding all the thorough and well-established procedures of our asylum system and putting our nation at risk,"
He also contrasted current policy direction with the prior approach.
Mullin added:
"Unlike the Biden Administration, the Trump Administration is putting the American people first and bringing an end to these reckless and rushed asylum practices."
Two clocks defined the system. First came the 2022 program rule: interview within 45 days of filing, no exceptions. Then came the 2023 settlement mandate: finish 90 percent of Operation Allies Welcome asylum adjudications within 150 days.
Department complaints followed, arguing that the settlement compressed review. The inspector general work product, delivered to DHS last week, treated that compression as a cause of the 40 percent error rate and of missed alias links to potentially disqualifying data.
DHS then stated the core finding on Tuesday. The sequence runs from program design, to settlement deadlines, to inspector general review, to a public security warning from the department’s leadership.
Authorities have not publicly detailed, in this reporting, the inspector general’s full methodology, sample size, or exact definition of an “error.” No public figure was given for the total number of Operation Allies Welcome asylum files reviewed or the raw number of errors behind the 40 percent rate.
Investigators have not said here how many people make up the “many” criminal releases tied to the listed conviction types, or the adjudication and release dates for each. The docket number and full operative text of the Ahmed vs. DHS settlement also were not laid out beyond the short case title and the 150-day, 90 percent directive.
The Oklahoma arrestee was not named in the account. Officials have not released, in this package, a final court outcome beyond the arrest for the alleged Election Day attack plan.
Those gaps do not erase the findings DHS chose to highlight: a 40 percent adjudication error rate, missed alias screening chances, listed criminal conviction categories among people released, and an alleged terrorism-related arrest tied to a program admittee.
Asylum is a legal protection with a screening backbone. When adjudication shortens under hard deadlines, the risk is not only paperwork mistakes. The risk is failure to connect names, aliases, and records that would block entry for people who already carry serious convictions or other bars.
USCIS sat at the center of the mandated interviews and the settlement-driven completions. The inspector general report assigned the error rate and the missed alias opportunities to that rushed posture.
DHS cast the issue as national security, not a narrow administrative dispute. Mullin’s statements put American public safety first and rejected rushed asylum processing as a governing model.
An inspector general report is an internal oversight product. DHS received it last week and spoke to its asylum error-rate finding on Tuesday. The department’s public message paired the 40 percent figure with concrete screening failures and with criminal and alleged terrorism examples tied to the Afghan admission pipeline.
Operation Allies Welcome began as a 2022 vehicle to admit Afghans. By 2023, litigation in Ahmed vs. DHS had added a numerical completion target on a 150-day clock. The later inspector general review treated that speed as costly.
For conservatives tracking border and asylum enforcement, the through line is familiar: deadlines without matching screening capacity produce avoidable risk. The report’s listed conviction categories and the Oklahoma arrest allegation supply the human-cost frame DHS is now using.
When asylum files move faster than the facts can be checked, the public inherits the danger. Law-and-order government means ending rubber-stamp timelines before the next preventable release.
