We did not anticipate that the Trump administration would systematically strip personnel in various agencies from refugee and SIV processing, reassigning law enforcement and intelligence officials to other duties. Even minor or ambiguous issues could bring vetting to a standstill.

In effect, President Trump and aide Stephen Miller greatly increased the vetting workload and then starved the system of resources to do the job.

The number of SIVs issued dropped by the hundreds. Iraqi SIVs fell from 557 in 2017 to 152 in 2019; the number of Afghan SIVs went from 4,120 in 2017 to 1,799 in 2020, as the number of applicants ballooned.

The processing time for Afghan SIV applicants in early 2021 reached 703 days.

“Extreme vetting” produced extreme delays that put our allies’ lives at risk and contributed to the desperate scenes we are witnessing in Kabul today.