Islamist terrorists—including at least one man linked to a Taliban-planed attack in the US—are using the illegal immigration route over the Mexico border to enter America.

According to official documents revealed by the Washington Times, a formal smuggling network is ferrying illegal immigrants from “Middle Eastern terrorism hotbeds to the US.”

According to the newspaper, at least one Taliban-linked Afghan arrested in a recent swoop was part of an attack plot in the US.

Immigration officials have reportedly identified at least a dozen Middle Eastern men smuggled into the Western Hemisphere by a Brazilian-based network.

From Brazil, the network has put the invaders in touch with Mexicans who guide them to the US border.

Those being smuggled in include Palestinians, Pakistanis, and the Afghan man who Homeland Security officials said had family ties to the Taliban and was “involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the US and/or Canada.”

The Afghan is in custody, but his name is being withheld at the request of the US government while investigations continue.

Some of the invaders were detained before they reached the US, but others have already successfully made the crossing into the US, the report continued

The Afghan was one of these, and was part of a group of six from “special-interest countries.”

The group, guided by two Mexicans, crawled under the border fence in Arizona late last year and made it about 15 miles north before being detected by border surveillance.

Quoting documents obtained by California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter, the Washington Times said that the information confirms “fears of a pipeline that can get would-be illegal immigrants from terrorist hotbeds to the threshold of the US.”

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.

The group of six men—consisting of the Afghan and five who claimed to be Pakistanis—all made asylum claims when they were caught by the Border Patrol.

The five “Pakistanis” were released under the “hold and release” instructions issued by the Obama administration—and promptly disappeared inside the US.

“It’s disturbing, in so many ways,” said Joe Kasper, Rep. 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 US 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.”