DHS Watchdog: Biden Afghan Asylum Files Had a 40% Error Rate

The Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday that its inspector general found a 40% error rate in asylum decisions under the Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome program for Afghans, and that the rushed timeline caused officers to miss alias matches that could have made applicants ineligible.

The Office of Inspector General report, numbered OIG-26-26 and dated September 2026, was released to the department last week. DHS posted its account of the findings on Sept. 29. The review covered the program set up in 2022, which required U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to interview an Operation Allies Welcome asylum applicant within 45 days of filing, with no exceptions.

The department said the review followed complaints that a 2023 settlement in Ahmed v. DHS compressed the process further. That settlement directed USCIS to adjudicate 90% of Operation Allies Welcome asylum applications within 150 days. The inspector general concluded the deadlines produced a 40% error rate and caused the agency to miss chances to connect an applicant’s alias names to information that could have barred asylum.

“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,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said. “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. Unlike the Biden Administration, the Trump Administration is putting the American people first and bringing an end to these reckless and rushed asylum practices.”

The report also says many migrants with criminal records were released into the country under the resettlement program, including people convicted of lewd or lascivious acts with a minor, sexual battery, hit-and-run, drug possession, and kidnapping. One Afghan national admitted through the program was arrested in Oklahoma last year and later pleaded guilty in a case alleging a plot for an Election Day terrorist attack.

Operation Allies Welcome was the Biden administration’s vehicle for moving Afghans into the United States after the 2021 withdrawal. The inspector general’s finding is not that every file was wrong. It is that four in ten adjudications in the reviewed set contained errors, and that the clock imposed by the settlement and the 45-day interview rule is what produced the misses. Alias checks are a basic screen. A file that never links a second name to a watch-list hit or a prior conviction is a file that can clear someone who should have been stopped.