The fatal shooting of two West Virginia National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C., and President Donald Trump’s renewed call to review green card holders from “countries of concern” such as Afghanistan, has revived long-standing criticism of how Afghan evacuees were screened during the 2021 Kabul airlift.
The case has once again put the chaotic withdrawal and subsequent resettlement under the microscope after authorities identified 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, originally from Afghanistan and previously part of a CIA-linked force fighting the Taliban, as the primary suspect. The incident claimed the life of West Virginia National Guard Spc. Sarah Beckstrom of Nicholas County, West Virginia.
On Friday, “Ingraham Angle” host Laura Ingraham told Fox News Digital that she and other conservatives have been warning about vetting failures tied to the Biden administration’s withdrawal plans since 2021, when she first reported that members of Congress were raising alarms about conditions and oversight at U.S. Army bases housing Afghan refugees.
“Soon after the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal, it was obvious that their intent was to bring as many Afghans into the U.S. as possible,” Ingraham wrote in an email.
“Conservatives, including myself, raised serious concerns about the cost, the difficulty of assimilation and potential threats posed to no avail,” she continued. “The Biden team didn’t care.
“We kept hearing, ‘But we promised,’ — Americans didn’t promise anything — and they shouldn’t be forced to keep paying for previous presidents’ horrendous mistakes.”
Back in September 2021, Ingraham reported that a senior Republican had demanded answers from then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken after reports from Fort Pickett in Blackstone, Virginia, described disorder and insufficient accountability for evacuees.
Blinken had publicly said the State Department’s focus during the Kabul airlift was to “get as many people out as fast as we can, while we had the airport functioning,” explaining that officials would carry out “accountings on the back end as people arrive in the United States.”
At the time, Ingraham argued that amounted to an admission that proper vetting had been de-prioritized before evacuees arrived on U.S. soil, and questioned whether they were being effectively contained on military installations.
Then-Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee, who later chaired the House Homeland Security Committee before leaving public office in 2025, sent Blinken a letter detailing concerns he said came from a source at Fort Pickett.
“I’ve recently been made aware from someone at Fort Pickett, Virginia, that Afghan evacuees basically have free rein of the complex and have even been allowed to leave, despite not having completed the vetting process,” Green wrote.
He described allegations of “multiple incidents of sexual assault” and evacuees being picked up by Uber drivers without authorization or clearance to leave the facility. Drawing on his own service in Afghanistan as an Army special operations flight surgeon, Green urged the State Department to confirm or deny those claims, calling them a clear national security risk.
Ingraham highlighted a contrast between Green’s warnings and Blinken’s public assurances that the administration’s priority had been to move people out of Afghanistan quickly while the Hamid Karzai International Airport remained operational, with vetting and accounting to follow once evacuees were on U.S. soil.
In her coverage at the time, Ingraham also reported that many evacuees boarded flights from Kabul with no personal documentation, raising basic questions about how any meaningful vetting could occur without proof of identity.
When asked then about congressional concerns, the Biden State Department responded that, as a general practice, it did not comment on communications with lawmakers.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, speaking to CBS News at the time, said the administration was dealing with “very few” evacuees who had given “any cause for concern.” When anchor Norah O’Donnell pressed him on whether he could guarantee that none of the “thousands” of prisoners released by the Taliban would resettle in the United States, Mayorkas replied, “I can guarantee you that we are doing everything possible to make sure that they don’t.”
A year after the withdrawal, lawmakers were still focused on what they described as lingering fallout from the rushed evacuation. In September 2022, Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wis., told Fox News that he was hearing reports from Fort McCoy in Tomah, Wisconsin, similar to those Green heard from Virginia.
“Should it be any surprise to the American people that they were misled?” Tiffany said, comparing the situation to his criticism of the administration’s handling of the southern border and inflation. “And now, a year later, we find out that they did not vet them.”
He said that when he visited Fort McCoy as the first 2,000 refugees arrived, “none of them had gone through the SIV (Special Immigrant Visa) process,” adding that evacuees could walk off base “without any authorization from the commanding officer.”
“We sounded the warning bell on that,” Tiffany said, arguing that the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security was only later acknowledging the potential threat to national security and local communities.
In her latest comments, Ingraham said that Afghan evacuees from Biden’s withdrawal often come from a culture she described as hostile to Western values and are, in her view, “all too dependent on the U.S. taxpayers to support them and their families.”
“This must end — (it’s) yet another calamitous Biden mistake President Trump is forced to address,” she said.
