Sheriff Michael Chapman of Loudoun County, Va. got an unpleasant surprise recently from Old Joe Biden’s handlers. On Thursday, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) published a press release that reveals the truly astonishing extent of the administration’s high-handedness, dishonesty, carelessness, and recklessness in its resettlement of Afghan refugees in cities and towns all over the United States. Without any prior warning, Loudoun County officials were told that 2,000 Afghan refugees would be arriving in the county in just over two weeks and that 2,000 more would be arriving every month after that through September. In what will come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention for the last thirteen months, Chapman and other Loudoun County officials found the Biden team to be disingenuous, uncooperative, poorly prepared, and worse.
“On February 4, 2022,” says the Sheriff’s Office press release, “the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) received an unannounced visit by the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Federal Protective Service (FPS) in which it learned that approximately 2000 Afghan refugees, per month, were slated to arrive at the Washington Dulles International Airport during a window beginning as early as February 19, 2022, and extending to September 2022.” This gave them just two weeks to prepare for the influx. “DHS/FPS regional personnel advised the refugees would be transported by bus to the National Conference Center (NCC) where they would stay until their ultimate relocation elsewhere in the United States. DHS/FPS estimated that no more than 1000 refugees per month would remain at the NCC at any given time until September 2022. The refugees, for the most part, would enter the US from Qatar.”
Let’s remember that in Oct. 2021, a Congressional delegation in Qatar led by Rep. Darell Issa (R-Calif.) was told that fully 12,000 of the Afghans who had come to Camp As Sayliyah and then went on to the U.S. had no identification at all. Issa stated: “They came with nothing. No Afghan I.D., no I.D. of any sorts. Those people were all forwarded on to the U.S., and that’s quite an admission. So many people had no I.D. whatsoever and yet find themselves in the United States today based on what they said.”
Are any of these people we know absolutely nothing about going to Loudoun County? There’s no way to tell, but once they get there, they’ll have it made: “DHS/FPS advised that the refugees will be provided cash and cell phones from non-government organizations and be required to remain on the NCC grounds.” Whether voting for Democrats was a requirement for keeping the dough rolling in was not mentioned; maybe it’s just understood.
Chapman found the information he had been given to be “vague,” and “raised concerns about DHS’ lack of communication, lack of planning, language barriers,” as well as about the fact that the National Conference Center was not fenced and was near “a residential neighborhood and two public schools.” In response, DHS officials told him that the Federal Protective Service would send over 15 officers to provide security. However, the Sheriff’s Office press release pointed out that “the FPS has no law enforcement jurisdiction in Loudoun County and cannot enforce nor investigate any criminal activity on the campus.”
Related: Biden to ‘Expedite’ Bringing More Afghan Refugees to U.S.
It got even worse. Chapman also asked: “What level of vetting has been conducted to ensure refugees entering Loudoun County had aided the United States and were not a threat to the US or our local community?” The Sheriff’s Office characterized the DHS response this way: “Refugees had been carefully vetted and many served as translators. However, when asked how if in fact they served as translators when only 30% of the refugees spoke English, DHS responded that many of the incoming refugees were family members of the translators.”
The shifting answer there gives the strong impression that the DHS is making all this up on the fly. That impression is reinforced by the fact that while they told Chapman that “refugees had been carefully vetted,” a Senate Republican report noted back in Oct. 2021, according to the Washington Examiner, that “senior officials across the departments of Homeland Security, Defense, State, and Justice described a disastrous screening and vetting process.” This process relied completely on databases of criminals and terrorists, which were incomplete in the best of times and even less useful in the chaotic situation of the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Biden administration officials accepted at face value what these Afghan evacuees told them about themselves without making any effort at all to check whether or not the evacuees’ claims were true. The report noted that “refugees are to be screened and vetted before being admitted to the U.S. through an extensive process that includes multiple interrogations. Rather than follow the protocol, the Biden administration instructed federal law enforcement and military officials handling the evacuations and processing to adhere to less stringent standards.”
Chapman also asked the DHS: “What communications had been done to prepare area residents who may be impacted by this?” The answer was as succinct as it was chilling: “None.” The DHS “stated that no coordination had occurred and that no notifications had been made to the community surrounding the NCC (as of February 15). Additionally, no coordination had been performed either with the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Director of Public Safety.”
So many of its actions make abundantly clear that the Biden administration simply doesn’t care about the well-being of American citizens. What is happening in Loudoun County is happening all over the country, with no regard for the possibility that there could be criminals and terrorists among the Afghan refugees, despite the fact that some have already been arrested. This will play out the way Leftist utopianism always does: the elites will feel good about themselves while ordinary people will have to pay the price.
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