White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday during a briefing that President Biden's administration is "not going to allow" charter flights with unvetted passengers from Afghanistan to land on American military bases, due to safety concerns.
According to Psaki, the Biden administration continues to "press the Taliban" over the issue of evacuation flights, many of which contain Americans, not being allowed to leave Afghanistan.
"We don't have a role in preventing flights from taking off," Psaki told reporters. "We are not on the ground, so that is not something that the U.S. government is doing. At the same time, some of these planes and some of the issues [include] where are they going to land."
Psaki noted that "a number of these planes" seeking to depart Afghanistan may have a "handful of Americans, but they may have several hundred individuals" who do not have proper documentation of identity.
"They may have several hundred individuals where we don't have manifests for them, we don't know what the security protocols are for them, we don't know what their documentation is," Psaki said, describing the situation as one of the "hard choices you face in government."
"Are we going to allow a plane with hundreds of people where we don't know who they are, we don't know what security protocols have been put in place, to land on a U.S. military base," Psaki stated, noting that there are "some charter planes taking off."
Psaki's comments come less than two weeks after thousands of Americans and Afghan allies, some of which had not been thoroughly vetted before arriving in America, fled Afghanistan due to the Taliban's takeover.
Comments
Post a Comment