Amid an overrun U.S.-Mexico border, President Joe Biden is asking U.S. Border Patrol agents to volunteer to go overseas to process thousands of refugees from the Afghanistan withdrawal, the Washington Examiner reported.
Three Border Patrol agents acknowledged to the Examiner their supervisors' request for volunteers to go to Afghanistan or nearby countries for 30 to 90 days to help process refugees.
The requests came in emails and meetings before their shifts, according to the report.
"Supervisors are getting a feel for agents' willingness to go to Afghanistan by asking around but no official solicitation yet," one agent wrote in a text message to the Examiner.
Thousands of Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applicants are being flown out of the country now under Taliban control, with thousands more coming over the next few weeks. The flood of those seeking to be rescued from Kabul's airport might extend that evacuation for months.
Thousands of U.S. citizens are still in Afghanistan hoping to come home, while there are tens of thousands more Afghan civilians who fear for their life for having helped U.S. troops and the Afghan government hold off the Taliban insurgency for decades, according to reports.
Customs and Border Protection told the Examiner there are already personnel in Doha, Qatar, screening and vetting SIV applicants.
"[The Department of Homeland Security] is working with interagency partners across the U.S. government and with international partners to enable the safe passage of these individuals, while ensuring the department is fulfilling its critical mission of protecting the American people and safeguarding our Homeland," a CBP spokeswoman wrote in a statement to the Examiner.
"The department, including CBP and USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services], has dedicated personnel expeditiously supporting the screening, vetting, and processing of Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applications and other eligible Afghans who are seeking refuge."
Customs and Border Protection is "getting a list of agents with experience" for the mission, a senior agent told the Examiner.
A similar request was made after the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in July, but the agency did not send personnel to Haiti, according to the report.
USCIS oversees asylum and refugee admissions, as well as visas and other legal immigration programs, and it has asked some of its 19,000 officers to volunteer for processing Afghanistan visas, but without overseas duty, according to CNN.
Biden's Operation Allies Refuge intends to resettle up to 30,000 at Fort Bliss in Texas and Fort McCoy in Wisconsin.
The potential diverting of resources from the U.S.-Mexico border comes at a tenuous time for southern border migration, which has reached a 21-year peak. In July alone, a record 210,000 illegal immigrants were encountered at the border, numbers that have steadily risen monthly since the Trump administration, when monthly averages were 30,000 to 50,00, according to the Examiner.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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