still at transit points around the world. it would be tens of thousands? so, realistically, two things. one, we talked about this a little bit earlier, but of the applicants in the program, and as i said we inherited by 18,000, about half of those and this remains more or less the case now, are at a point where it is before the cleave admission has given his or her approval that they are eligible for the program. and we focused on i was looking for a number and the question i was leading to is that given the fact that the siv process was to slow and not undertaken during the trump years in a significant way. you sped it up. that is great. you knew that there was no way you were going to get all of these people out in time. let me put a final point on it. given the rapid collapse of the afghan security forces. and you said yesterday that you inherited a date, but in fact
you didn t inherit the date. it was may 1st and you pushed it to august 31st. why didn t you push it much la later so we could process the siv applicants and those who have worked with us that had not yet applied. i don t understand why i date was not inherited or selected that would be sufficient to actually remove people from the nation in a way that would be in keeping with our moral commitment to honor our citizens, our green card holders as well as those who have worked with us over the years? two things if i may. first the we took some risk in terms of what the taliban would do or not do after may 1st in pushing beyond may 1st. and we of course worked this very hard. well it is a risk with other people we took. it is a risk it was a risk on people we cared for. just to be clear the military told us in
difficult circumstances. i want to get to where we are today. during this process, the state department was very open to all members of congress, democrats, republicans, as we filtered information into you about vulnerable people in an effort to get them out of afghanistan. today our offices are still being deluged by requests to help people that are in afghanistan and ngo s are working aggressively. you could share us with the process that you re using in order to filter information about americans that still in afghanistan who want to leave, that applies for siv status and those at risk, how do we transmit that information and what is process is in place so that we could try to get these people out of afghanistan. yes, thank you, senator. as i noted, we ve established a task force focused entirely on
reverse the hard earned rights of afghan women and minorities and a safe haven for terrorists. many who wish to attack the united states. the biden administration left afghanistan in total disarray and single handedly created a humanitarian crisis with thousands of refugees and internally displaced afghans in need of immediate emergency assistance. secretary blinken you characterize the evacuation as an extraordinary effort. you have touted over 124,000 evacuees. the department s efforts were plagued by lack of basic planning. failure to identify americans and energize the siv process and a failure to recognize the taliban for what it is, a terrorist organization. the numbers are telling. you evacuated 6,000 40 americans and say only a couple hundred remain. your own department told this
at that point in time do we know they have some form of i.d. and we didn t. we re hearing all of these assurances that we re getting biomet biometrically screened, a 14-step plan. i asked the head of northern command at fort mccoy, describe those steps to me and what are re screening them against? are isis terrorists, al qaeda terrorists, have we biometrically screened them in the past that we could compare them to a data base. what is that 14 step process in detail. tell me and describe to us in detail how are we keeping this nation safe from such a chaotic situation? so, senator, the 14-step process referred to the special immigrant visa applicants and there is a lengthy process. so had you about the for other 124,000 people. so to come to your point,