ISLAMABAD: The recent arrests of three high-profile Afghan threats within a week highlight the urgent need to reassess individuals admitted to the US under Operation Allies Welcome and Operation Enduring Welcome, as emphasized by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Todd Lyons in a comment to a private television.
A post on X by the US ICE shared Lyons's comment from Wednesday.
Lyons said, “You know, ISIS is an organization and agency that was born out of 9-11. So that's our main mission, right, is counterterrorism, national security.”
‘Nothing like that ever happens again’
“So, we want to ensure that nothing like that ever happens again, especially on a day like, you know, Pearl Harbor Day, right, that we want to make sure there are no surprise attacks ever again.”
“You know, this individual, member of ISIS-K, he was supplying weapons to his father, who is still an Afghan national and a commander in the Taliban in Afghanistan to this day,” Lyons added.
The ICE acting director said, “He was arrested right down a few miles from here in the capital, in Waynesboro.”
‘Go back and re-vet’
“You know, the same week we arrested this individual, we had the individual that shot the National Guardsmen, and then we also had the individual, another Afghan, who came in on the Operation Allies Welcome, who tried a weapon of mass destruction attack at the Air Force Joint Base in Fort Worth, Texas.”
“So, ICE has to go ahead and go back and re-vet these individuals.”
Lyons said, “We have to look at who we let in, because there’s over 190,000 of these Allied Welcomes Operation candidates that came in, that we have to go back and properly look at them.”
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