CLAIM: Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY), running for Kentucky’s open Senate seat, claims that 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 uses to claim that he holds the same position on Afghan refugees as Trump and Vance make no mention of the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program, or the P visa program that the congressman has been explicit in supporting.
This month, the Fight for Kentucky PAC released an ad detailing Barr’s support for bringing Afghans to the United States on SIV visas and P visas following the Biden administration’s withdrawal of U.S. Armed Forces from Afghanistan in 2021.
“Two brave National Guard troops attacked by an Afghan immigrant, let into our country by cowards like Andy Barr,” the ad states, going on to quote Barr saying, “We have failed in our obligation to help many of these Afghans.”
“Help? These sick disgusting murderers?” the ad continues before quoting Barr again saying, “We owe them, to help them get into our country with these visas.”
“They don’t belong here and Andy Barr doesn’t belong in the Senate,” the ad states.
The ad mentions the case of Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who is accused of murdering National Guardsman Sarah Beckstrom and leaving National Guardsman Andrew Wolfe in critical condition with life-altering injuries in 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, where tens of thousands of Afghan nationals were brought to American communities in 2021 — many thousands of whom were not screened or interviewed in person.
In August 2023, two years after Biden’s mass Afghan resettlement began, the State Department Inspector General (IG) issued a report detailing alarming issues with the federal government’s SIV program for Afghan nationals, which was routinely funded by Democrats and Republicans.
Among the findings, the IG report revealed 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 seemingly complaining that the Biden administration was not resettling Afghans quickly enough on SIV and P visas in the U.S.
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 assistance to the United States, and we owe them to help them get into our country with these visas, and the P-1 and P-2 visas as well.
“And I voted for these Special Immigrant Visas because it would send a terrible message to our allies around the world that we’re going to abandon you if you help us in your time of need,” Barr continued.
At the time of Barr’s comments, the Biden administration had not finished conducting evacuation flights of American citizens out of Afghanistan.
Also, just two days before Barr said the United States had “failed” to get Afghans to the U.S. quickly on SIV and P visas, American officials at Middle East bases started blowing the whistle on Afghans with terrorism ties trying to secure such SIV visas.
Defense One reported at the time:
Moreover, the Defense Department’s Automated Biometric Identification System has flagged up to 100 of the 7,000 Afghans evacuated as prospective recipients of Special Immigration Visas as potential matches to intelligence agency watch lists, a second official said.
In his response to the Fight for Kentucky PAC ad, Barr’s campaign spokesperson Alex Bellizzi claims that that his “position on Afghan refugees is the same as President Trump’s and Vice President JD Vance — help the vetted Afghan allies who fought alongside our troops, while opposing Joe Biden’s reckless program to resettle unvetted migrants.”
“That’s the America First position President Trump laid out in 2021,” Bellizzi said.
Barr’s campaign points to remarks Trump made on Fox News in August 2021 where he said, “I’m America first, the Americans come out [of Afghanistan] first, but we’re also going to help people that helped us and we have to be very careful with the vetting because you have some rough people in there, but we’re going to help those people.”
Trump made no mention of the SIV program or P visas for Afghans.
In his second term, Trump has empowered the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to re-vet all Afghans brought to the U.S. under Biden and has gone on to freeze all visa issuances to Afghan nationals, among others.
The remarks Barr uses to claim he has the same position as Vance stem from an August 23, 2021, video posted to X where the then-Senate hopeful Vance goes after then-Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) and other establishment-aligned Republicans for their backing Biden’s bringing Afghans to the U.S. as a priority over the national security of Americans.
“The question is, who have we made promises to? Who do we have an obligation towards? And to any leader of this country, the obvious answer should be American citizens,” Vance said. “So let’s focus first on getting them out of Afghanistan before we say another word about the Afghan refugees.”
“The question is not whether we help the Afghan refugees, the question is first, 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 Breitbart News’s Matt Boyle that Biden’s Afghan resettlement operation across the United States was putting Americans at risk and potentially aiding terrorists.
“The idea that these people are vetted is a lie, and we need to call out that lie. Now, if we do that of course, what they [leftists] say is, ‘The reason you don’t want these Afghans in your community is because you are a racist.’ Well, that’s not true. I don’t care about the color of their skin,” Vance said.
“Here’s what I care about — that according to Pew Research, 40 percent of people who live in Afghanistan believe that suicide bombings are an acceptable way to solve a problem,” Vance continued. “Are we allowed to say that I don’t want 100,000 people unvetted from a country where nearly half the people think suicide bombing is an OK way to solve a problem? Because I don’t want that.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.
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