After three years and more than $5 billion, the State Department is finally closing down a program that ushered thousands of poorly vetted Afghans into the United States — from a nation known to harbor deadly terrorist operatives.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently informed Congress he will close the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts office, which brought to America more than 200,000 Afghan nationals who qualified for Special Immigrant Visas and the United States Refugee Program.
But the American public, and especially our veterans of the 20-year war in Afghanistan, deserve to know the truth: CARE and the whole enterprise known as “Enduring Welcome” failed in its basic mission — to ensure that only those Afghans who served honorably alongside Americans were welcomed into this country.
Under former President Joe Biden, CARE became another dangerous and irresponsible open-border migration project, dramatically failing to make America safer, stronger or more prosperous.
After his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Biden created the CARE office to assist Afghans who cooperated with the US mission in that country.
The intent was to grant safe haven to Afghans who had put their lives in danger by working or partnering with the US military or American diplomats.
Yet, as Americans well know from the disaster at the nation’s southern border, senior Biden officials never cared about seriously screening any US-bound migrants, no matter their origin.
Over four years, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken pursued one overriding migration priority: thwarting the law to admit millions of foreigners.
Thus, the CARE office became just another pathway for Biden’s open-border extremism.
Multiple State Department whistleblowers have documented how CARE authorized the admission of countless Afghans who neither worked for the United States nor demonstrated a legitimate fear of the Taliban.
These unqualified Afghans were allowed to bypass vetting rules and perpetrate identity fraud to gain a place in line with deserving applicants.
They systematically fabricated recommendation letters, identity cards, employment records and other documents — while unscrupulous CARE contractors, many of Afghan heritage themselves, handed out special favors to extended-family members and other undeserving applicants who only wanted a free ticket from a clueless Uncle Sam.
On paper, all applicants claimed fear of Taliban reprisals. Yet some who were approved later traveled back to Afghanistan — belying their claims, and in some cases hinting at active Taliban connections.
Others departed Afghanistan with apparent ease, flying out of Taliban-controlled airports and crossing Taliban-guarded land borders.
Like the rest of Biden’s government, CARE made a mishmash of authenticating applicants’ entry claims.
Biden officials disregarded normal security name-checking procedures to speed up processing, whistleblowers have told Congress.
For example, CARE directed case managers to push along files in which an applicant’s name appeared to match a suspect in official terrorist and criminal databases.
Because the Taliban does not cooperate with US authorities, these cases are almost impossible to resolve.
Normal vetting procedures require such applicants to be rejected — but under Biden they were admitted into the country.
Worse, Afghan nationals who recently entered the United States have attempted acts of terrorism.
Last year, two Afghans were stopped before they could execute plans to kill Americans at polling stations in Oklahoma City on Election Day.
In April another Afghan, stopped by police officers in Virginia, drew a handgun — and would have killed those officers had they not fired first.
Mainstream media outlets have mostly ignored the fraud, corruption and vulnerabilities that infected CARE.
When they report on it at all, they do so with the na?ve assumption that every Afghan is who he or she claims to be.
Shawn VanDiver of the group Afghan Evac and some other US military veterans want President Donald Trump to accept half a million or more Afghan immigrants — continuing, in effect, Biden’s open-border mania.
Activists claim that deserving Afghans are still languishing in their home country, and accuse Trump of abandoning America’s allies.
Certainly, some Afghans bravely assisted our military and diplomats over years of fighting. Many of them, no doubt, were in genuine fear of the Taliban.
But that small number of Afghans was admitted months, and in some cases years, ago.
The original mission of the CARE office and Enduring Welcome was a noble cause that all Americans could rally behind.
Three years later, that effort has been revealed to be replete with fraud, waste and pervasive corruption.
Most importantly, the CARE enterprise has imported threats to the United States and imperiled American lives.
Trump is protecting America by shutting down CARE and halting any further arrivals of unvetted Afghans into our country.
Phillip Linderman is a board member of the Center for Immigration Studies and chairman of the Ben Franklin Fellowship.