An “ally” who helped the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan was arrested Tuesday on immigration fraud charges, with authorities saying he fooled federal authorities into granting immigration passes to other Afghans who didn’t deserve them.
Mustafa Aman, 39, also lied on his own application, claiming he was single when he was in fact married, prosecutors said.
He then helped at least four others file fraudulent applications. He wrote bogus letters claiming that the four had worked for a company assisting in the U.S. war effort and were entitled to apply to come to the U.S., when in fact they had not been part of that effort, the Justice Department said.
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Mr. Aman would go on to earn U.S. citizenship.
“It is disturbing that this defendant repeatedly took advantage of our country’s generosity,” said Charles Neil Floyd, the acting U.S. attorney in Seattle, who alleged Mr. Aman “used fraud at every step of the process to bring others from Afghanistan to this country.”
The prosecution comes as supporters of Afghan allies push to grant protection to those brought to the U.S. during the Biden administration’s disastrous troop withdrawal and airlift operation in 2021.
That operation evacuated tens of thousands of Afghans out of Kabul. While many were deserving, experts say perhaps half of them lacked ties to the war effort and shouldn’t have been put on the planes.
The Trump administration last year canceled the parole and temporary protected status designations that had protected them from deportation.
Rep. Jason Crow, Colorado Democrat, announced plans this week to try to force a vote on renewing the TPS designation.
“After more than two decades of war, we made a promise that we’d look after them. It’s both a moral and national security imperative that we keep that promise,” he said.
In Mr. Aman’s case, he worked as a logistics specialist for an American defense contractor in Afghanistan.
He parlayed that position into an application for a Special Immigrant Visa, which Congress designated to give an escape valve to Afghans who assisted the U.S.
His 2013 application gave an incorrect marital status, authorities said. He would later apply for a fiancee visa for the woman, whom he was already married to.
In 2014, he helped another person with an SIV application. He is accused of forging a letter of recommendation from the defense contractor, even though the other person didn’t work for the firm.
Mr. Aman would repeat that with another person in 2014, then do it again in 2016 and 2022 — though that latter time he used another firm’s name, the indictment says.
Government investigators have cited a colossal amount of fraud in the Afghan ally program, with false identities and fabricated birthdates.
Screeners also appear to have missed Afghans with criminal records back home. The lack of cooperation with the Taliban government and remoteness of some parts of the country make verifying identities and backgrounds difficult.
And there are more worrying issues than the fraud.
Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in September that he learned two high-profile Afghans accused of crimes came to the U.S. because of bogus applications.
Mr. Grassley, in a hearing with the FBI’s director, said the Afghans’ letters of recommendation from a government official — part of the process of obtaining the special visa — were fake.
One of the Afghans Mr. Grassley said benefited was the man charged with the shooting attack on National Guard troops in Washington last year. The other was involved in funding an Islamic State offshoot.
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