Sponsors
The bill centralizes vetting data and requires in-person biometric checks to strengthen oversight and reduce improper benefit payments, but does so at the cost of potential delays in aid, increased administrative burden and taxpayer costs, and heightened privacy and stigmatization risks for evacuees.
Taxpayers and federal overseers: DHS will maintain a centralized database tracking evacuee vetting status and criminal-history information and provide systematic reporting to Congress and GAO, enabling clearer federal oversight, audits, and program transparency.
Evacuated Afghans and taxpayers: requiring in-person vetting and biometric verification before access to federal means-tested benefits should reduce improper benefit receipt and potential fraud, protecting program integrity.
Evacuated Afghans and low-income families: may be denied unemployment benefits and means-tested public assistance until they complete required vetting, creating immediate financial hardship for vulnerable households.
Evacuated Afghans and immigrants: creating and storing a centralized database with personal, biometric, and criminal-history data — plus reporting individual-level vetting status to Congress quarterly — raises privacy, data-security, and stigmatization risks for those individuals.
Taxpayers and federal workers: mandating in-person vetting and biometric collection for all evacuees could strain DHS resources, slow processing, delay access to services, and increase administrative costs.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires DHS to verify and in-person vet non‑U.S.-citizen Afghan evacuees, maintain a vetting database, report quarterly to Congress, and bar benefits until vetting is complete.
Introduced December 2, 2025 by Joshua David Hawley · Last progress December 2, 2025
Requires the Department of Homeland Security to verify personal and biometric information and conduct in-person vetting for every non-U.S. citizen, non-Service member evacuated from Afghanistan and brought to the United States in coordination with the U.S. between January 20, 2021 and January 20, 2022. DHS must build and maintain a database with personal/biometric data, criminal history (since U.S. entry), benefit/unemployment benefit applications and receipts, and vetting status, and must provide quarterly reports to Congress until it certifies vetting is complete. The bill bars individuals who have not provided required information and completed in-person vetting from receiving unemployment compensation or any Federal means-tested public benefit; it also requires two GAO audits (one within two years of enactment and another within one year after DHS certifies completion), with GAO reporting deadlines specified.