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International

Afghan Evacuee Added to CIS National Security Vetting Failures Database

Published

1 year ago

8 minute read

Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi displaying a pro-ISIS hand gesture common among ISIS militants. He posted this photo on a Tik Tok account while in Oklahoma, resulting in an account ban. Photo courtesy of an FBI complaint filed as part of his criminal court case.

From the Center for Immigration Studies

By Todd Bensman

Former CIA guard is charged with terrorism; assurances that he was vetted turn out to be untrue

An Afghan evacuee from the August 2021 fall of Kabul who stands charged with multiple terrorism offenses that include a mass-casualty firearms attack plot is the latest addition to the Center for Immigration Studies National Security Vetting Failures Database, bringing the total number of cases to 49.

In March 2023, the Center published the database collection to draw “remedial attention” to ongoing government vetting failures lest they “drift from the public mind and interest of lawmakers, oversight committee members, media, and homeland security practitioners who would otherwise feel compelled to demand process reforms”, according to an explanatory Center report titled “Learning from our Mistakes”.

The latest addition is Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, who worked in Afghanistan as an outside guard for a Central Intelligence Agency facility and was authorized for air evacuation from a third country a month after the August 2021 fall of Kabul to Dallas, Texas, on a hastily approved humanitarian parole.

He was among nearly 100,000 mostly Afghan evacuees, of whom about 77,000 were initially admitted into the United States via humanitarian parole through a program called Operation Allies Welcome. All became eligible for more permanent Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) mainly intended to protect Afghans who collaborated with U.S. military operations from reprisals by the Taliban group that seized control of the country.

After arriving in the United States on September 9, 2021, on humanitarian parole, Tawhedi settled with his wife and infant near Oklahoma City on an SIV. He initially worked as a Lyft driver in Dallas and later as an auto mechanic in Oklahoma.

Some 37 months after arriving, in October 2024, the FBI arrested the 27-year-old Tawhedi and a juvenile co-conspirator — Tawhedi’s brother-in-law — for an alleged plot to conduct an Election Day terrorist firearms attack in the United States on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization still active in Afghanistan. The unidentified co-conspirator, an Afghan, entered the United States in 2018 also on an SIV, but little else is known about his vetting processes.

Their plot involved liquidating a house and personal assets to fund the repatriation of Tawhedi’s wife and child to Afghanistan and weapons necessary for him and the juvenile to conduct a mass-casualty attack during which they would be killed, a criminal complaint alleged. The pair obtained semi-automatic rifles and ammunition for the attack, although by then FBI undercover agents had penetrated the plot.

Shortly after the arrests, U.S. government officials claimed that Tawhedi was “thoroughly” vetted three times: first to work for the CIA in Afghanistan, then “recurrently” by DHS for the humanitarian parole status allowing him to fly into the United States, and then for the Special Immigrant Visa once he was settled, probably sometime in 2022.

No red flags turned up, they asserted, without providing evidence.

“Afghan evacuees who sought to enter the United States were subject to multilayered screening and vetting against intelligence, law enforcement and counterterrorism information. If new information emerges after arrival, appropriate action is taken,” a DHS spokesperson told Fox News Digital in October 2024.

But within weeks of making those assertions, U.S. officials reversed course and acknowledged that Tawhedi did not undergo the previously claimed vetting. The State Department, in fact, never vetted or approved Tawhedi, nor had he been very thoroughly vetted for his CIA guard post job in Afghanistan, they said. DHS did not “thoroughly” vet Tawhedi for humanitarian parole on a recurring basis as initially claimed about all Afghan evacuees, either, before allowing him to fly from the unknown third country into the United States.

The screening process for Afghan evacuees in the program includes probing for any possible ties to terrorism, ISIS, or the Taliban using databases the U.S. compiled over 20 years in Afghanistan that include data from applicant electronic devices, biometrics, and other sources.

It’s unclear when Tawhedin radicalized in ways that might have been detected. U.S. officials initially told U.S. media they believed that happened only after he was admitted into the United States. In court records, the FBI says Tawhedi’s initial crime — sending $540 in cryptocurrency to ISIS — occurred in March 2024. But his ties and extremist proclivities almost certainly predated the currency transfer.

Had Tawhedi been thoroughly vetting when he was supposed to be, red flags were more likely than not available to be found both before and after he arrived in the U.S.

For instance, adjudicators might have found pre-existing extremist ideological proclivities within Tawhedi’s immediate family because two brothers evacuated to France also were arrested in September 2024 for a terrorism plot there to attack a French soccer match or shopping center, according to numerous media accounts and information that surfaced during an October 2024 Oklahoma City federal court hearing. (The French and Americans collaborated on both cases).

Furthermore, court records reveal that Tawhedi maintained relationships with well-known ISIS figures that were sufficiently trusting to have enabled direct communications with them by phone and on encrypted apps.

In fact, Tawhedi trusted these operatives to care for his repatriated wife and child after he was killed in the U.S. attack and to gift substantial remaining funds from the sale of the Oklahoma house. Lastly, an FBI investigator in the October 2024 court complaint indicated that most extended family members in Tawhedi’s Oklahoma circle were aware of the plot, approved, and could still be charged as co-conspirators as of that time.

The fact that many family members in the U.S. and abroad felt this way about Tawhedi’s plans further indicates that their extremism pre-dated U.S. entry and might have red-flagged during face-to-face interviews, database checks, and other standard security vetting practices.

Underscoring the admitted Tawhedi vetting failure, a September 2022 DHS Office of Inspector General report found, in part, that U.S. Customs and Border Protection “admitted or paroled evacuees who were not fully vetted into the United States” and that, “As a result, DHS may have admitted or paroled individuals into the United States who pose a risk to national security and the safety of local communities.”

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Georgia county admits illegally certifying 315k ballots in 2020 presidential election

International

Georgia county admits illegally certifying 315k ballots in 2020 presidential election

Published on December 23, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

Approximately 150 ‘tabulator tapes’ tracking the votes of more than 300,000 early voters were not signed.

Fulton County, Georgia, has admitted to including 315,000 early votes in the disputed 2020 presidential election despite the fact that they were not properly certified according to state law.

State law demands that voting “tabulator tapes” that publish the recorded results of polling stations must be verified and signed by poll workers, but approximately 150 tapes tracking the votes of more than 300,000 early voters were not signed.

In a hearing before the State Election Board (SEB), an attorney for Fulton County said the county does “not dispute that the tapes were not signed.”

“It was a violation of the rule,” she said. “They shouldn’t have done it.”

“At best, this is sloppy and lazy. At worst, it could be egregious,” fired back Georgia SEB Member Janelle King. “It could have affected an election.”

The December 9 hearing was the result of election integrity activist David Cross, who filed a challenge with the board in 2022, alleging that Fulton County’s handling of early voting violated the state’s election rules.

“These are not clerical errors. They are catastrophic breaks in chain of custody and certification,” Cross said during the hearing.

“Because no tape was ever legally certified, Fulton County had no lawful authority to certify its advanced voting results to the secretary of state. Yet it did,” said Cross. “And Secretary [Brad] Raffensperger accepted and folded those uncertified numbers into Georgia’s official total without questioning them.”

“This is not partisan. This is statutory. This is the law. When the law demands three signatures on tabulator tapes and the county fails to follow the rules, those 315,000 votes are, by definition, uncertified,” said Cross.

“Georgia has the most secure elections in the country and all voters were verified with photo ID and lawfully cast their ballots. A clerical error at the end of the day does not erase valid, legal votes,” averred Raffensberger.

Meanwhile, Republicans took issue with Raffensperger’s denial of the seriousness of Fulton County’s procedural lapse.

Republican Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones ridiculed Raffensberger’s post.

“If only Georgia had an official responsible for preventing clerical errors that undermine election integrity,” said Jones, a candidate for Georgia governor.

“Is there anyone in Georgia who has that job, Brad?” asked Jones, his opponent in the state’s gubernatorial race.

“We just started peeling the layers back on this onion and it already stinks,” said U.S. House Rep. Mike Collins (GA-10). “Years later, when the truth finally comes out, Trump was right.”

“President Trump is owed a massive apology,” asserted Collins. “Turns out over 300,000 early votes in the 2020 election were illegally certified but still included in the final results.”

Collins said he is “tired of empty words from weak leaders. The people of Georgia demand action.”

In the 2020 election, Joe Biden narrowly beat out incumbent President Donald Trump by less than 12,000 votes in the Peach Tree State.

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International

Communist China arrests hundreds of Christians just days before Christmas

Published on December 23, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By S.A. McCarthy

The operation lasted nearly five days, yet no public statement was issued by officials,” the outlet noted. “Within just the first two days, several hundreds of people were taken away for questioning.

Hundreds of Christians in China will likely spend Christmas in jail this year, according to a recent report. Starting on December 13, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mobilized “more than a thousand police officers, SWAT units, anti-riot forces, and firefighters” in the Zhejiang Province’s Yayang Town in Wenzhou City, raiding churches and conducting mass arrests of Christians, ChinaAid reported Friday.

“Belongings of relevant individuals were illegally confiscated, roads leading to the church were completely blocked by police, and Christians in Yayang Town were unable to enter the Yayang church. The operation lasted nearly five days, yet no public statement was issued by officials,” the outlet noted. “Within just the first two days, several hundreds of people were taken away for questioning. On December 16 and 17, at least four more individuals were detained.”

Two local Christians, 58-year-old Lin Enzhao and 54-year-old Lin Enci, were labeled “principal suspects of a criminal organization” by the CCP, with locally-posted wanted posters charging the two with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” which ChinaAid noted is a “commonly used charge” by the CCP against religious and political dissidents. Over the past several years, CCP officials in Yayang Town have attempted to forcibly destroy church property, including symbols such as crosses, and install CCP propaganda and imagery, such as the five-star Red Flag and the CCP’s constitution. Enzhao and Enci were key figures in opposing the CCP’s efforts.

Chen Yixin, director of China’s Ministry of State Security, is a native of the province and has led efforts to demoralize the Christian community there, including by initiating a program to destroy crosses in 2014 and install the national flag, the Constitution, laws, and socialist core values in Christian spaces and promote the “localization” and “politicization” of religious activities. However, the Christians of Yayang Town have resisted the CCP’s efforts for over a decade, hosting rallies and demonstrations and even confronting state police when necessary.

Following the mass arrests this month, the CCP hosted an “Elimination of Six Evils” demonstration, with SWAT officers and riot police deployed en masse “to demonstrate force, intimidate local Christians, and create an atmosphere of fear, framing the earlier law enforcement actions as ‘results of the anti-organized crime campaign,’” by which the government means the crackdown on Christians. According to ChinaAid, police have stationed vehicles at the homes of known Christians, “disrupted” communications among Christians in the area, and have even gone “door-to-door” questioning church members and asking them to denounce Enzhao and Enci.

“Government-driven public opinion campaigns are spreading defamatory rumors portraying Christians as ‘unpatriotic’ or belonging to a ‘cult,’” ChinaAid reported. “This approach aligns with China’s recent trend of criminalizing certain religious activities. On September 29, China’s leader reiterated in a speech the need to ‘systematically advance the Sinicization of religion.’ Earlier, mass arrests at Beijing Zion Church saw pastors and church members detained on fabricated charges of ‘fraud.’”

In comments to The Washington Stand, ChinaAid founder and Senior Fellow for International Religious Liberty at Family Research Council Bob Fu said, “The massive pre-Christmas assault on churches in Wenzhou is a chilling reminder that the Chinese Communist Party fears the light of Christ most when it shines brightest. To raid churches days before Christmas is not only an attack on Christians — it is an assault on human dignity, conscience, and the hope that faith brings to a wounded world.” He continued, “History teaches us that no regime has ever succeeded in extinguishing faith through force. These pre-Christmas attacks will only strengthen the resolve of China’s house churches and further expose the moral bankruptcy of state-sponsored persecution.”

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and other religious liberty watchdogs have repeatedly warned that China’s totalitarian regime is enacting human rights abuses against religious groups within the nation’s border. A USCIRF report late last year detailed mass arrests and the destruction or removal of church property, part of CCP President Xi Jinping’s “sinicization of religion” policy. Religious groups and leaders who do not register with the official government-approved religious organizations are often arrested, imprisoned, and forced into “anti-cult” programs to “de-program” Christians. Earlier this year, USCIRF called on President Donald Trump to designate China as a “country of particular concern” (CPC) due to the CCP’s brutal oppression of Christians and other religious dissidents.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Family Research Council, publishers of The Washington Stand at washingtonstand.com.

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