Andy Barr Lies About Trump, Vance Position on Afghan Refugees in Response to Brutal Ad
CLAIM: Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY), a candidate for Kentucky’s open Senate seat, says he holds the same position as President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance regarding refugees arriving from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
VERDICT: False. The quotes Barr used to claim he has the same stance on Afghan refugees as Trump and Vance make no mention of the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program, nor the P visa program that the congressman has explicitly supported.
This month, the Fight for Kentucky PAC released an ad detailing Barr’s support for bringing Afghans to the United States on SIV and P visas following the Biden administration’s withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from Afghanistan in 2021.
“Two brave National Guard soldiers attacked by an Afghan immigrant, let into our country by cowards like Andy Barr,” the ad says, then quoting Barr as saying, “We failed in our obligation to help many of these Afghans.” »
“Help? These sick, disgusting murderers?” the ad continues before quoting Barr again as saying, “We owe it to them to help them get into our country on these visas.” »
“They don’t belong here and Andy Barr doesn’t belong in the Senate,” the ad says.
The ad mentions the case of Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, accused of killing National Guard Sarah Beckstrom and leaving National Guard Andrew Wolfe in critical condition with life-altering injuries during an ambush-style attack in Washington, DC, in November of last year.
Lakanwal was resettled in the United States as part of President Biden’s Operation Allies Welcome program, during which tens of thousands of Afghan nationals were brought into American communities in 2021 – several thousand of whom were not screened or interviewed in person.
In August 2023, two years after Biden’s mass relocation to Afghanistan began, the State Department’s Inspector General (IG) released a report detailing alarming problems with the federal government’s SIV program for Afghan nationals, which was routinely funded by both Democrats and Republicans.
Among the findings, the IG report found that the SIV program to bring Afghans to the United States relied on cooperation from the Taliban.
For months now, a clip of Barr has surfaced on social media, showing him in an August 26, 2021 interview with Kentucky Educational Television apparently complaining that the Biden administration was not resettling Afghans with SIV and P visas in the United States quickly enough.
Barr said:
We have failed in our obligation to help many of these Afghans who risked their lives and, in many cases, died for the cause of their own country in aiding the United States, and we owe it to them to help them enter our country on these visas, as well as the P-1 and P-2 visas.
“And I voted for these special immigrant visas because it would send a terrible message to our allies around the world that we are going to abandon you if you help us in our time of need,” Barr continued.
At the time of Barr’s comments, the Biden administration was still conducting evacuation flights of U.S. citizens out of Afghanistan.
Furthermore, just two days before Barr declared that the United States had “failed” to quickly bring Afghans to the United States on SIV and P visas, U.S. officials at bases in the Middle East began reporting Afghans with ties to terrorism who were trying to obtain such SIV visas.
Defense One reported at the time:
Additionally, the Defense Department’s automated biometric identification system identified up to 100 of the 7,000 evacuated Afghans as potential recipients of special immigration visas and potentially matching intelligence agencies’ watch lists, a second official said.
In his response to the Fight for Kentucky PAC ad, Barr campaign spokesperson Alex Bellizzi says his “position on Afghan refugees is the same as that of President Trump and Vice President JD Vance: helping select Afghan allies who fought alongside our troops, while opposing Joe Biden’s reckless agenda to resettle unchecked migrants.”
“This is the America First position that President Trump has laid out in 2021,” Bellizzi said.
Barr’s campaign is referencing remarks Trump made on Fox News in August 2021, where he said: “I’m America first, Americans get out.” [of Afghanistan] first, but we’re also going to help the people who helped us and we have to be very careful with the controls because there are some tough people in there, but we’re going to help these people.
Trump made no mention of the SIV program or P visas for Afghans.
During his second term, Trump empowered U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to reexamine all Afghans brought to the United States under Biden and froze all visa issuances to Afghan nationals, among other things.
The remarks Barr uses to claim he has the same position as Vance come from an August 23, 2021 video posted on X in which Vance, then a Senate candidate, attacks the then-senator. Ben Sasse (R-NE) and other establishment-aligned Republicans for their support of Biden’s proposal to bring Afghans to the United States as a priority rather than Americans’ national security.
“The question is: Who have we made promises to? Who do we owe obligations to? And for any leader of this country, the obvious answer should be the American citizens,” Vance said. “So let’s focus on their exit from Afghanistan first before saying a word about the Afghan refugees.”
“The question is not whether we help Afghan refugees, the question is how do we do it? And how do we do it in a way that doesn’t destroy our own sovereignty?” Vance said.
The following month, in September 2021, Vance told Matt Boyle of Breitbart News that Biden’s Afghan resettlement operation across the United States was putting Americans in danger and potentially aiding terrorists.
“The idea that these people are being controlled is a lie, and we have to expose that lie. Now, if we do that, of course, what they [leftists] say, “The reason you don’t want these Afghans in your community is because you’re racist. » Well, that’s not true. I don’t care what color their skin is,” Vance said.
“Here’s what matters to me: According to Pew Research, 40 percent of people living in Afghanistan think suicide bombing is an acceptable way to solve a problem,” Vance continued. “Do we have the right to say I don’t want 100,000 people going unchecked in a country where almost half the population thinks suicide bombings are a good way to solve a problem? Because I don’t want that.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
