'A Devastating Embarrassment': Ashley Moody Slams Biden For Afghan Withdrawal, Parolee Program

Senator Moody. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is an important hearing. I think anytime we can show the American people that we are thoroughly investigating and providing oversight when there has been harm in America to Americans, especially those that have volunteered to serve, we need to show that we're doing everything we can to make sure we mitigate the chance of it ever happening again. And so I appreciate all three of you being here today so that we can perform this critical review, this critical function of government on behalf of the American people. And unfortunately, we continue to find example after example where failures of the last administration come to light. I mean, we were, I as a former attorney general discovered numerous examples where laws were being broken, reckless decisions were being made during the last administration, got courts to find that laws were being broken, reckless decisions were being made. And unfortunately, we still had the same activity go on and on and on, and watching the horrific results of those decisions and policies play out on our TVs every night. And so I think it is incredibly important as a nation that we the people demand that we get back to proper governance and that we examine what went wrong and how we ensure it doesn't happen again. So the tragedy that we witnessed right before Thanksgiving, the tragic killing of a National Guardsman and the critical wounding of another at the hands of a foreign national, the American people deserve answers. Tragedies like this are becoming all too familiar and I can name the names and the Americans across the nation can name these by heart now, Lincoln Riley, Nathaniel Barker, Sarah Beckstrom, their families now grapple with the reality that they will be missing loved ones. And time and time again, under Biden's leadership, non-citizens, heck even entire foreign nations were prioritized over American citizens. And that shameful withdrawal from Afghanistan, the way that went down reminded Americans of that fact. In fact, I bet everyone in this room sitting here today remembers exactly what they were doing when they watched that debacle, that tragedy play out. I polled everybody in my office this morning, do each of you remember when you saw that happen and played out on TVs, do you remember what you were doing? Every single one of them remembered it because it was such a devastating embarrassment to our nation and certainly a morale blow to the men and women that served over there. Not only did they allow millions and millions of illegal aliens to flow across our Southern border and then pushed so many of those that were unvetted into our neighborhoods, they granted entry to thousands of barely vetted Afghan nationals at the expense of American citizens. You know, you don't have to just take my word for it, Hunter Biden just said last month that the Afghanistan withdrawal was an obvious failure. And I think he used profanity with that, but the position remains, and it may be the only thing we agree on, that the last president, President Biden, failed the American people and President Trump is trying his best to fix it and now Congress has to act to make sure that these fixes stick and that we don't find ourselves in this position again. And so, Mr. Baker, I thank you for your service to our country. Under President Trump, we stopped, we have stopped treating border security and vetting like best practice suggestions, and we've started treating them like the core national security responsibilities that they are. Can you share with us or identify any enhanced Trump-era special immigrant visa screening practices or controls that made that program more secure and reliable, which we should codify or focus on so that these cannot be bypassed in the future during a time of crisis? Senator, thank you for that question. My office has not done work. As you may know, the Afghan SIV program has been suspended. However, we do have four recommendations outstanding with the department if that program is to be restarted that will strengthen SIV processing. And again, I'm speaking to SIVs and not to what my colleagues would be handling with humanitarian parole. One particular area we saw from the very beginning was the lack of strategic planning, that is, of setting goals and measuring them systematically, policies for ongoing interagency coordination and improvements, a second recommendation, and employment verification, MOU with DOD, and finally, staffing plans. So we have four recommendations, and I know my colleagues and the other OIGs do too, that, if implemented, will strengthen the program, and I trust Congress can consider in that context. I see I have used all of my time, so I will defer back to the chair. Thank you so much. I want to thank all of our witnesses.