A stunning report from the Washington Times details a network of illegal immigrants coming from terrorist hotbeds like Afghanistan and Pakistan crossing the Mexican border into the United States in Arizona.

Reporter Steven Dinan received a chilling account from Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) which describes a group of six men, five from Pakistan and one from Afghanistan, who crawled under a border fence in Arizona. According to the report, the six illegal aliens made it 15 miles into the United States before being intercepted by Border Patrol Agents.

It’s disturbing to think that a network of illegal aliens could be funneling into America from terror-friendly countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan.  However, what happened next with these six is even more disturbing:

Just as troubling, the Border Patrol didn’t immediately spot the Afghan man’s terrorist ties because the database that agents first checked didn’t list him. It wasn’t until agents checked an FBI database that they learned the Afghan may be a danger, the documents say.

“It’s disturbing, in so many ways,” said Joe Kasper, Mr. Hunter’s chief of staff. “The interdiction of this group … validates once again that the southern border is wide open to more than people looking to enter the U.S. illegally strictly for purposes of looking for work, as the administration wants us to believe. What’s worse, federal databases weren’t even synced and Border Patrol had no idea who they were arresting and the group was not considered a problem because none of them were considered a priority under the president’s enforcement protocol. That’s a major problem on its own, and it calls for DHS to figure out the problem — and fast.”

But, here’s the buried lede:

The group of six men nabbed inside the U.S. — the Afghan and five men identified as Pakistanis — all made asylum claims when they were eventually caught by the Border Patrol. Mr. Hunter said his understanding is that the five men from Pakistan were released based on those claims and have disappeared.

That’s right. Not only are people flooding over the border on a regular basis. Not only are some of the illegal aliens coming from terrorist hotbeds. Not only are these criminals not being checked against Homeland Security terror-watch databases.

No, that’s not enough.

To make the incompetence complete, these would-be Jihadists can claim political asylum and then just disappear into our society.

Read the whole report at the Washington Times. It will leave you sleepless.