Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are seeking answers from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) regarding the vetting process for Afghan national Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi. Recent media reports suggest Tawhedi, who was arrested in connection with a plot to carry out a violent attack on behalf of ISIS in the United States on Election Day, was not vetted for a special immigrant visa as previously claimed by the Biden-Harris Justice Department.

Senators Lindsey Graham, John Cornyn, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, Thom Tillis, and Marsha Blackburn have written to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. They responded to reports indicating that Tawhedi had never been approved for a special immigrant visa and was not "well known to the US government" when he entered the country through immigration parole after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The Senators expressed concern: “We remain deeply troubled by the increasing likelihood that foreign extremists may successfully exploit the weaknesses of our immigration system or our southern border to commit an act of political violence or an act of terror here on U.S. soil, and the policies of the Biden-Harris administration have only made matters worse.”

They further stated: “This ongoing failure to protect Americans from potential terroristic threats is unacceptable and it is only a matter of time before it yields deadly results. As part of our ongoing oversight of DHS’s use of immigration parole and its response to the heightened threat environment the U.S. finds itself in, we are requesting that you provide to us for review a copy Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi’s alien file (a-file) and any other records related to his parole and vetting he received prior to his arrest, no later than November 1, 2024.”

The full text of their letter is available online.