Brandon Waltens - Editor, Texas Scorecard Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And of course, after we bailed on Afghanistan, we invited
seventy six thousand Afghanistan refugees to come here to the
United States. Thirty six million dollars spent to repatriate them
here in Texas for things like healthcare and other things.
I'm sure. So we spent probably all together hundreds of
millions of dollars on this particular project. And of course

(00:22):
we didn't really vet them. We don't really know much
about them. There's limitations to how we can bet them.
Have we vetted them since at least the ones here
in Texas. Brandon Waltons joins US editor Texas Scorecard. He
wrote a story about this for Texas Scorecard. What do
we know about the Afghans who came here, Brandon, Well.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
We know that Texas has been the landing spot for
tens of thousands of these Afcian refugees that had been
sent in, like you mentioned, many of them unvetted or
lightly vetted after they came here in twenty twenty one,
following our sun and withdrawal from Afghanistan. You know, this

(01:03):
was pushed under the guys that we're just letting people in.
That that helped us while we were over there people
that might be be targeted once we leave. But unfortunately,
what we've seen and why there's been attention on this
recently is that we've had not one, but we've had
had a couple of news stories just in the last
couple of weeks where we've seen some of these afking

(01:24):
refugees that were set here under Operation Allies Welcome is
what it was called under the Biden administration that have
been a part of violent attacks. You had the shooter,
of course in DC that shot to National guardsmen and
killed one, and and then you had here in Texas
in Fort Worth, somebody who had threatened, you know, made

(01:45):
a big bomb for it on on TikTok of all
places in Fort Worth, and that person being arrested and
charged with some federal charges as well. They were here
as well under this program, and so that's why there's
a a lot of attention now looking at this program,
looking at what happened Biden administration, and a lot of

(02:05):
questions about what we do next.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Well, they think that the Washington, DC shooter of those
two National guardsmen was radicalized after he got to the
United States. This entire strikes me that this entire program
was set up with the idea, let's just get them
out of Afghanistan. Let's put them here in a country
where they don't speak the language, where they don't have
a job, where they may or may not have a
place to live that is permanent, it might be temporary,

(02:29):
and then we just throw some money at it and
hope that they managed to assimilate. Easier said than done.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Exactly, And unfortunately, this is what we've come to expect
from so many of these government grants, especially the ones
we saw into the Biden administration where money was being
funneled to NGOs that they might disperse this money. In
this case, this grant money was actually given to county cities.
Harris County was the largest recipient of of the Texas

(03:00):
money you about fourteen million dollars, but shared other places
like Dallas, San Antonio, even Tarrant County where where Fort
Worth is and where this you know, the latest bomb
threat was.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Well and we know too that places like Harris County
don't necessarily spend the money on what they were given
the money for. Did that money actually go for that
purpose or did they spend it on something else?

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Well, you know, we're certainly looking into that. Unfortunately, we've
come to expect that, you know, many times that money
does you know, money fungible. In a lot of times
that money does sort of go away. But you know,
I think that the bigger issue here is that we
now I think there's a lot more focus on the
fact that we know we have tens of thousands of

(03:45):
as again refugees that have been unvetted that are here
in the state, and I think that that's you know,
a major, a major concern for a lot of folks.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
Doctor. I think the state needs get involved in em
betting them if they can, or at least follow up
to see where they are, what they're doing and making
sure that everything's safe.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Certainly, and that's certainly an option, and we haven't really
heard anything yet from state leaders, you know. At the
same time, govern Greg Abbott has been out there against
groups like the Council of American Islamic Relations declaim them
a foreign terrorist organization, and so you know, he's done
somewhat recently countering some of the islamis Islamic threats that

(04:28):
we've been facing here in Texas. And we'll see if they.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Follow up on this. As well all right, Brandon, thank you,
appreciate it. Editor Texas Scorecard, that is Brandon Walton say
it is six twenty seven and it's time to take
a look at your money.