[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 200 (Monday, December 1, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8414-S8415]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
HONORING SPECIALIST SARAH BECKSTROM AND STAFF SERGEANT ANDREW WOLFE
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, as we all know, we are back from the
Thanksgiving holiday where most of us--I hope all of us--had a chance
to spend some time with our family and show thanks for the blessings
that we have experienced, first and foremost of which is to live in a
country like the United States of America. We truly won the lottery
when we became Americans by virtue of birth or getting here as fast as
we could.
After a weekend of turkey and football, we return to some somber
news. As the Senator from West Virginia recounted just a moment ago, on
Wednesday, two of our National Guard servicemembers stationed near the
White House were shot in a targeted ambush. One of these victims, Army
SPC Sarah Beckstrom, was only 20 years old and passed away the
following day, while another victim, SSgt Andrew Wolfe, remains in
critical condition, and I know we all continue to pray for his
recovery.
The perpetrator was an Afghan parolee--that has special
significance--who entered the country under the Biden administration's
Operation Allies Welcome Program, which was notorious for insufficient
vetting of Afghan refugees.
I raised alarm bells about this mass parole of Afghan refugees back
in 2024 when I co-led a letter to Department of Homeland Security
Secretary Mayorkas, pressing the Biden administration for their
inadequate screening processes for Afghan refugees, including some who
were later found to have had ties to ISIS.
I ask unanimous consent to have this letter printed in the Record at
the end of this statement.
Madam President, I would like to point out that this risk and the
threat of these kinds of deadly results was something that many of us
were concerned about and raised with the Biden administration a long
time before the tragic incidence of this Thanksgiving season.
We wrote in this letter:
In the chaos following the withdrawal [from Afghanistan],
the Biden-Harris administration paroled into the U.S. over
77,000 Afghans with no or significantly incomplete security
checks done on them prior to their arrival.
The reason why ``parole'' is an important word is because this
particular shooter who shot these two West Virginia guardsmen did not
come into the country on any one of the Special Immigrant Visa
Programs. He was simply paroled, which is an exercise of Executive or
Presidential authority allowing an immigrant into the country without
adjudicating any sort of asylum or refugee claim or anything else.
As we point out in this letter of October 18, 2024, we raised
concerns about the Biden administration passing this massive parole of
77,000 Afghan nationals with no or insignificant or significantly
incomplete security checks done on them prior to their arrival.
The letter goes on to say:
In the three years since, the Department of Homeland
Security . . . has failed to conduct proper vetting of these
parole recipients.
People like the shooter who shot the two West Virginia National
Guardsmen.
A DHS Office of Inspector General report from May of 2024
found that [the Department of Homeland Security] has no
established process or dedicated component for monitoring
parole expiration for the Afghan parolee population, and that
there are significant gaps in how DHS responds to potential
derogatory information discovered in the recurrent vetting
process.
But here is perhaps the most important line in this letter. We said:
This ongoing failure to protect Americans from potential
terrorist threats is unacceptable and it is only a matter of
time before it yields deadly results.
Well, unfortunately that prediction of this massive parole of 77,000
Afghans into the United States under the Biden administration's
Operation Allies Welcome Program, that prediction proved to be true and
come to pass.
Our prayers continue to go out to the family of Sarah Beckstrom, an
American hero who gave and made the ultimate sacrifice for her country,
and we continue to pray for the full recovery of Andrew Wolfe. These
young men and women in uniform put their lives on the line day in and
day out so that the rest of us can sleep safe and secure.
When tragic events like this take place, it is a reminder to all of
us of
[[Page S8415]]
the sacrifices they make in order to protect our freedom and public
safety.
I am grateful to President Trump and to FBI Director Patel for their
swift response and for their commitment to bring the perpetrator of
this heinous event to justice; but even more than that, we need to make
sure it does not reoccur through other poorly or insufficiently vetted
Afghan parolees. Unfortunately, this is part of the legacy of the Biden
administration's open borders and immigration policies where they
defied the law which reserves parole through a case-by-case basis to do
it on a categorical basis along the southern border and now with the
Afghan parolees.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
U.S. Senate,
Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, DC, October 18, 2024.
Hon. Alejandro Mayorkas,
Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Washington,
DC.
Dear Secretary Mayorkas: We write today to request more
information about the immigration status of Nasir Ahmad
Tawhedi, the Afghan national who was recently arrested in
connection with a plot to commit a violent attack on behalf
of ISIS in the United States on Election Day. According to
the criminal complaint filed by the Department of Justice,
Tawhedi ``entered the United States on September 9, 2021, on
a special immigrant visa and is currently on parole status
pending adjudication of his immigration proceedings.''
However, according to reporting from Fox News, Tawhedi was
never approved for a special immigrant visa and was not
``well known to the US government'' when he was brought to
the United States.
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. It was President Biden and Vice
President Harris disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan that
led to Tawhedi being in the United States in the first place.
In the chaos following the withdrawal, the Biden-Harris
administration paroled into the U.S. over 77,000 Afghans with
no or significantly incomplete security checks done on them
prior to their arrival. In the three years since, the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has failed to conduct
proper vetting of these parole recipients. A DHS Office of
Inspector General report from May 2024 found that DHS has no
established process or dedicated component for monitoring
parole expiration for the Afghan parolee population, and that
there are significant gaps in how DHS responds to potential
derogatory information discovered in the recurrent vetting
process.
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.
Thank you for your prompt attention and cooperation in this
matter.
Sincerely,
Lindsey O. Graham, John Cornyn, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Josh
Hawley, Tom Cotton, Thom Tillis, Marsha Blackburn.
____________________