Commerce, Justice, Science; Energy and Water Development; and Interior and Environment Appropriations Act, 2026

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we all remember the tragic murder of SPC Sarah Beckstrom on the eve of Thanksgiving. She was, as we all will recall, one of the National Guard servicemembers working here in the District of Columbia. We are continuing to pray for the recovery of Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, who was injured in the shooting. But, of course, Specialist Beckstrom lost her life.

The news cycle moves very quickly, and it seems like while something happens today, tomorrow, it is something new. But it is important that we not allow the mistakes that were made by the Biden administration when it came to vetting Afghan nationals to be forgotten. We cannot ignore the reality that Sarah Beckstrom was another victim--an unnecessary victim--of President Biden's careless immigration policies.

The man who committed this heinous act was an Afghan national whom President Biden allowed to enter the country after our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Unfortunately, it is too late to bring Sarah's life back, but her death should not be meaningless, relegated to headlines with no action. It is not too late to look back on the flawed decisions that allowed her killer to enter the United States in order to correct these mistakes and to prevent future harm.

Furthermore, this crime at the hands of an Afghan national parolee was not a one-off occurrence. The following week, another parolee--and I will define that further, but this is not pursuant to any law actually passed by Congress, like the Special Immigrant Visa Program. This was done outside of that program, with even fewer protections and less vetting.

But the following week after Thanksgiving, another parolee nearly committed a terrorist attack in Fort Worth, TX. Thanks to the Federal and local law enforcement, they were able to apprehend him and prevent him from carrying out that attack.

I am grateful to the Department of Justice, including the FBI, and our State and local law enforcement officials who prevented this attack from happening. But the fact that the perpetrator is here in the United States in the first place underscores yet again the failure to vet the individuals who came into this country via the Biden administration's parole.

The repeated incidents--and there are many more--committed or attempted by Afghan nationals demonstrate that something has gone terribly wrong with the way government has been vetting or failing to vet aliens who have entered the country, and I believe that these questions deserve answers.

For that reason, I am chairing a Judiciary Committee subcommittee this afternoon, alongside our colleague Senator Hawley from Missouri, entitled ``Biden's Afghan Parole Program--A Trojan Horse with Flawed Vetting and Deadly Consequences.''

At this hearing, we will carefully examine the policies implemented or those failed to be implemented by the Biden administration that led to these tragic events, particularly the flaws in President Biden's mass immigration and parole programs that were not just limited to Afghan nationals. As I have said, ``parole'' is a unique term under immigration law. But it is worth revisiting exactly how this happened, because, again, this happened not because of any program passed by the Congress but unilaterally by President Biden.

Under U.S. immigration law, ``parole'' in laymen's terms is kind of like an E-ZPass, like speeding through a toll booth. U.S. immigration service defines ``parole'' as ``the discretionary decision that allows inadmissible aliens . . . [who] are not admitted to the United States . . . to be physically present in the United States.'' It is sort of like a permission slip.

Parole is an authority that allows the Department of Homeland Security Secretary to waive people into the country who otherwise would not be allowed in.

Under Operation Allies Welcome, President Biden extended this immigration E-ZPass to hundreds of thousands of aliens who weren't eligible to come to the United States. This discretionary authority was only supposed to be used on a case-by-case basis. It is an authority that President Biden repeatedly abused not only in this program but at the southern border as well to admit hundreds of thousands, even millions of individuals into the country during the Biden years and their open border policies.

But even though this authority is supposed to be used only on a case- by-case basis, the Biden administration turned this exception into the rule. Now we also know that when it came to the Afghan parole program, Operation Allies Welcome, the Biden administration allowed in many aliens who had not been fully vetted, including the man who drove across the country to murder this young National Guardsman and the man who threatened to carry out the suicide bombing in Fort Worth, TX, who were not eligible to enter the United States but for this discretionary E-ZPass issued by the Biden administration without adequate protections for the American people.

As we will learn at the hearing, in most, if not all, cases, the Biden administration did not know exactly who these people were. Many of them could not say when they were born or even their own last name.

I think we sort of fail to recognize that the population we are dealing with, the individuals in Afghanistan--many of them are functionally illiterate. And, of course, many of them are coming from this country that was war-torn and literally run by the Taliban, which is an international terrorist organization. Consequently, many of these aliens have likely committed acts of terror or have ties to terror groups.

In some cases, the U.S. Government was asking the Taliban to verify information on these individuals. Now, that strikes me as rather bizarre. The Taliban, a terrorist organization that would kill many of the Afghans who cooperated with the U.S. military--we are actually asking them to verify the identity and eligibility of these individuals to enter the United States. In any event, the Taliban is hardly a reliable source of information.

The lack of information on these parolees also raises the possibility of a preliminary background check coming back clean because there simply wasn't enough information available to determine whether this person was safe or not.

Essentially, the policy of the Biden administration was--the default was, come on into the country, in the absence of derogatory information. But the fact of the matter is, in war-torn Afghanistan, now run by a terrorist organization, where you have literally functionally illiterate individuals, the absence of derogatory information is not any proof that these individuals could safely be allowed into the United States. So the default was, let them in, even in the absence of any information whatsoever.

At today's hearing, we will learn more about this and other problems with the Biden administration's mass parole of Afghan nationals into the United States.

Once again, let me just reiterate that tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of individuals were admitted into the United States due to President Biden's open border policies, using this same claimed discretionary authority, which should be used only on a case- by-case basis. But the Biden administration opened its arms and allowed hundreds of thousands of individuals--indeed, more likely, a million or more individuals--to come in on the parole program.

So the Afghan parole program was simply a subset of the larger policy of the Biden administration to welcome foreign nationals with open arms into our country without our knowing enough about them to know whether they would be a threat to public safety.

We will hear from two panels of experts who will help shine a light on the missteps of the Biden administration. Our first panel will include Mr. Craig Adelman, deputy inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security; Michael Roark, deputy inspector general with the Department of Defense, and Mr. Arne Baker from the Office of Inspector General at the Department of State. We have a second panel where we will hear from researchers and policy experts who will speak to the nuances of the vetting--or the lack of vetting--that the Afghan parolees underwent.

While it is important to treat our friends and allies with proper consideration, assuming that they are not a threat to the American people, if we want the cooperation of other foreign nationals in the future in some of our conflicts, the bottom line is the nonnegotiable demand has to be the American people being able to sleep safe at night knowing they are safe from criminal aliens and terrorist sympathizers. That is the nonnegotiable bottom line.

They deserve to know--we all deserve to know what actions the Biden administration took or did not take that risked their safety. At this afternoon's hearing, we will give the American people the answers or at least begin to give them the answers that they and we deserve.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source