U.S. authorities recently disclosed that more than 100 Afghans claiming refugee status flown out of Kabul showed up on intelligence agency terror watchlists.
Adding to this sense of an incompetent administration, law enforcement has apprehended a previously deported, convicted rapist at an American airport.
Ghader Heydari arrived in the United States aboard an Ethiopian Airlines charter flight, landing in Washington Dulles International Airport, the Washington Times’s Stephen Dinan reports. It was there that border agents apprehended Heydari. While ultimately unsuccessful, improper vetting at departure increased the likelihood that Heydari would slip past immigration authorities and perpetrate further crimes on American soil.
President Biden and his Secretary of Homeland Security — leftist and immigration-expansionist Alejandro Mayorkas — have historically not concerned themselves with criminal asylum-seekers.
How He Got Here
Citing law enforcement sources, Dinan notes that Heydari “was allowed to board an Afghan evacuation flight and reach America.”
Heydari joined other evacuees on an Ethiopian Airlines charter but “border officials flagged the 47-year-old on his arrival.… They appear to be the first to have spotted his criminal and immigration history and derailed his entry.”
Continued Dinan:
Heydari’s exact path to entry is not clear, though it’s unlikely he holds a Special Immigrant Visa. Those were reserved for Afghans who provided significant support for the U.S. in the war effort.
It’s also not likely he is a refugee, given his immigration history.
That leaves parole, a power the homeland security secretary has to grant admission to the U.S. in exceptional humanitarian cases. Most Afghans evacuated to the U.S. appear to be parolees rather than having official immigration status. …
A senior administration official briefing reporters last week said security checks were supposed to be completed outside the U.S.
“That happens at the transit hubs, and it happens before individuals are allowed into the United States,” the official said. “That’s, in particular, with the biometric and biographic security screenings that our colleagues in the intelligence community and law enforcement and other counterterrorism components of our government are doing.
Disturbingly, the convicted rapist’s crimes might not have been enough to keep him grounded in Kabul. Upon landing here, “officials tried to persuade him to cancel his request to enter, formally known as withdrawal of application for admission, but he appears to have refused.”
Heydari is incarcerated at the Caroline Detention Facility in Bowling Green, Virginia, per Dinan.
The Rape
Heydari was granted a green card in 2000, Dinan reported:
A man whose name and age match Heydari‘s pleaded guilty to rape in Ada County, Idaho, in 2010. He served over five years in a state prison and was released on supervision in December 2015, according to state records.
An immigration judge told ICE to deport him in 2016. The agency booted him in 2017. Prison records show that he was released in 2015.
Heydari DocHeydari’s arrest is precisely why Rep. Tom Tiffany, as TNA reported last week, wants refugees vetted in third-party countries.
“We have a responsibility to ensure that #Afghans are who they say they are and that their stories check out before we cut them loose into American communities,” he tweeted on August 222. “That is not a radical proposition — it is common-sense. We must get this right.”
Tiffany tweeted that message after GOP Sen. Ben Sasse invited Afghans who had assisted the U.S. war effort to “my neighborhood.”
Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance took Sasse to task as well. He wanted to know why Biden brought Afghans to the U.S. before confirmation that all Americans were rescued. Vance also alleged authorities were not vetting the refugees.
Noting that 40 percent of Afghans back suicide bombings, Vance stated:
Let’s ensure that we’re properly vetting them so that we don’t get a bunch of people who believe they should blow themselves up at a mall because somebody looked at their wife the wrong way.
Given the Biden Regime’s remarkably imprudent decision to pack U.S. military aircraft with questionably vetted refugees, U.S. citizens deserve answers from their leaders.
