Afghan military trainees go AWOL in the United States; Grassley presses for answers, fixes
WASHINGTON – Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman
of the Judiciary Committee, is pressing the State Department and the Department
of Homeland Security to explain lapses in the screening and tracking of Afghan
military trainees in the United States after an inspector general report
shows a number went missing, with 13 trainees still unaccounted for.
“There are so many problems here, it’s hard to know where to start,” Grassley said. “This is bad for national security, bad for Afghan military readiness, and bad for U.S. taxpayers. If the U.S. government can’t keep tabs on foreign military trainees, maybe the training shouldn’t take place in the United States. The report also shines new light on the old problem of agency failures to communicate with each other, even under the same departmental umbrella. They have to do a better job of that, especially those fulfilling the no. 1 responsibility of the federal government of protecting the homeland. That’s why I’m writing to press the relevant agencies for answers.”
A
report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction
(SIGAR) said that since 2005, more than half of the foreign trainees who go
absent without leave (AWOL) in the United States are from Afghanistan. Of those
AWOL Afghan trainees -- soldiers in the United States for special military
training -- 70 moved to other countries afterward, 39 obtained legal status
such as asylum, and 27 were either deported, arrested or awaiting processing
for removal. As of March, the report said 13 have unknown statuses.
The
report cites agency findings that such AWOL trainees are considered “high risk”
because they involve militarily trained individuals of fighting age who have
demonstrated a “flight risk” and have low risk of arrest and detention for
absconding. In addition to posing national security concerns in the United
States, the missing trainees could harm operational readiness in Afghanistan,
and their absence wastes millions of dollars of the almost $70 billion of U.S.
tax dollars spent to train and equip the Afghan military.
The
report finds that the U.S. agencies involved have communication failures that
have contributed to their inability to keep track of the Afghan trainees or
investigate those who go AWOL. In a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
and Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Elaine Duke,
Grassley pressed the agencies to explain their disagreements with the report’s
recommendations on improving communication and data collection.
“Unfortunately, despite the numerous national security concerns associated with this high risk group, neither the Department of Homeland Security nor the Department of State seemed to agree with the recommendations offered by SIGAR,” Grassley wrote.
Grassley
said the problem of poor intra-agency information-sharing over potentially
problematic individuals leading to unwarranted immigration benefits is
well-known. He cited the example of an individual at a summer camp in
California who was identified as a potentially serious risk to public safety, yet
still allowed to work with children, because U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services (USCIS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) failed to
communicate about the risk concerns. The individual eventually was arrested for
molesting children in his care.
“To remedy this potential for miscommunication, USCIS needs to be able to rely on law enforcement partners like ICE for notification of derogatory information that could impact these adjudicative decisions,” Grassley wrote. “It is my understanding that the Department of Homeland Security still has not developed formal protocol to assist ICE in notifying USCIS directly about targets of investigations.”
Grassley
asked the agencies to explain why they disagree with some of the report’s
recommendations to better screen and track Afghan trainees. He asked for a
briefing of committee staff and a response to his letter by Nov. 2.
The
letter is available
here.
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