Jenny Taher

Those countries include Afghanistan, but also several others in the Middle East, in Africa, in South Asia.

The Trump administration is wanting USCIS, the agency that vets immigration applications for legal programs, to really scrutinize individuals who are applying or have been accepted to some programs.

So what this looks like in practice is the Trump administration is halting all processing of any legal immigration applications from individuals from these 19 countries.

And for those who have been already accepted to become green card recipients or citizens, their programs, their swearing in ceremonies, for example, are put on pause for now as the Trump administration does a more thorough vetting process here.

So now the Department of Homeland Security is saying that this individual was, quote, barely vetted.

There's some really interesting tidbits that they've revealed here as part of...

his process into getting into the United States under the Biden administration in 2021.

That was when the U.S.

left Afghanistan during the botched withdrawal from the country.

So he had no criminal background check, they revealed, no biometrics check, no cyber background check, and no financial background check.

This is very concerning because he was not the only one who came this way.

There were about 77,000 others admitted into the country through what's called Operation Allies Welcome.

And some of this we already know.

There was a government watchdog that came out months after we left Afghanistan that said the vetting was poor and minimal at the time.

We know of some cases also where individuals who were quote unquote vetted led into the country through this program.

And then we learned of their terror ties after the fact.

So the Trump administration is looking at a report that recently uncovered billions of dollars of taxpayer fraud.

And dozens of Somalis from Minneapolis have been charged in this.

In one of the cases of this fraud, to give you an example, there was a group that was taking COVID funds from taxpayers that was supposed to be used to feed children.

And this ended up actually going to pay for properties overseas in places like Kenya and Turkey.