Zabi-Ullah Hemmat wasn’t just one of 415,816 illegal immigrants caught at the southwest border in fiscal 2016. Nor was he just another of the 84 people from Afghanistan apprehended by Border Patrol agents that year.

What made Mr. Hemmat of special interest to authorities is that when he was snared by agents after 11 p.m. on a chilly November night and they ran his name through federal databases, he came back listed on the no-fly terrorist watch-list.

Mr. Hemmat is one of the terrorism suspects caught trying to sneak into the U.S. from Mexico — a category of people that is very much part of the current debate over illegal immigration, with President Trump insisting his border wall would deter people from being able to reach American soil and Democrats saying there’s no real danger.

Mr. Hemmat’s case suggests both may be wrong.

He was indeed on U.S. terrorism lists, linked to both the Taliban and a plot somewhere in North America, according to Department of Homeland Security documents. But after he was caught, wandering in southern Arizona with two Mexican guides and five other men from Afghanistan and Pakistan, he said he had sneaked in by crawling under an existing border fence near Nogales, Arizona.

Democrats say the number of potential terrorists who do try to enter via the land border is negligible, and several news reports over the last week say the numbers amount to the low double digits each year.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen says the exact numbers are too sensitive to release, but she says it’s on the increase.

Homeland Security does say it “encountered” more than 3,000 “special interest” migrants — people whose nationalities and travel patterns made them potential national security concerns — at the southern border in 2018.

“I am sure all Americans would agree that one terrorist reaching our borders is one too many. These are just the terror suspects we know about who reach our border,” Ms. Nielsen said on Twitter, defending the White House’s claims.

The Washington Times has not been able to independently verify a total number of terrorists who have entered via the southwest border, but it has spent several years tracking cases such as Mr. Hemmat‘s, where someone with terrorist connections was nabbed after sneaking in.

Among those were four Turkish men who claimed ties to a Marxist insurgency known by the acronym DHKP/C, who paid $8,000 apiece to be smuggled into the U.S. They traveled from Istanbul via Paris to Mexico City, then shuttled to the border where they were caught in 2014.

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