Here’s how our border mess could become an election-year nightmare:

Imagine that hundreds of Tajik migrants from Central Asia enter the United States through a smuggling network that the FBI subsequently discovers might have links to the Islamic State-Khorasan terrorist group. Some of the migrants are arrested nearly a year after they entered the country, but many still have not been located.

In our scenario, the FBI scrambles to find what could be a ticking ISIS-K time bomb. It uses wiretaps and sting operations to locate recent arrivals who may have some connection to the Islamic State spinoff. But it’s playing catch-up. The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general reports that the agency lacks the vetting tools it needs to identify and stop migrants with possible terrorist connections at the border.

Folks, this isn’t a hypothetical. All of these details are real. Intelligence officials haven’t found evidence of an organized ISIS-K plot against the homeland. But the awful truth is that they don’t know what’s out there. America, with its porous border, is vulnerable to the stream of people who enter the country every day.

FBI Director Christopher A. Wray has been delivering hair-on-fire warnings about this problem for months. His latest came in June 4 testimony to a Senate committee: “Increasingly concerning is the potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland” such as the March attack by Tajik members of ISIS-K that killed 139 people at a Moscow concert hall.

In early June, the FBI and DHS arrested eight Tajik migrants in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. The operation, aided by FBI wiretaps, was first reported by the New York Post. The paper said at least one of the suspects had slipped into the country across the Mexico border more than a year ago. Surveillance showed that some had used “extremist rhetoric,” according to CNN. “Rather than risk the worst-case scenario of a potential attack, senior US officials decided to move in and have the men apprehended,” CNN reported.

Concern about the ISIS-K threat grew earlier this year when the intelligence community received new information that more than 400 Central Asian migrants had entered the United States through a “human smuggling network” potentially connected to ISIS, according to NBC News. Because of what one official told me was “extra caution,” about 150 of these “persons of interest” have been arrested, but about 50 haven’t been located, the network said.

This flow of Central Asian migrants is a new headache for DHS. Officials estimate that about 40 people from that region cross into the United States every day, and that there are now “tens of thousands” of undocumented migrants here from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and other Central Asian countries. Most are economic migrants arriving through smuggling networks that operate using social media, cheap travel, transit through layovers in Europe - and then easy entry into the United States.

The big gap in the system is that DHS lacks the tools to vet potentially dangerous migrants seeking asylum at border points of entry. It needs more people and resources to query classified databases and use biometric data.

A scathing report on the lack of vetting tools was issued June 7 by DHS Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari. “The Department of Homeland Security’s technology, procedures, and coordination were not fully effective to screen and vet noncitizens applying for admission into the United States,” he wrote.

The core problem is that border enforcement has become a political football rather than a law-enforcement and national-security problem. A divided Congress won’t approve the spending DHS needs for additional people and updated systems. And despite a 2004 law that requires intelligence agencies to share counterterrorism information, DHS “could not access all Federal data necessary to enable complete screening and vetting of noncitizens seeking admission into the United States,” according to the inspector general’s report.

The asylum backlog is crushing. The DHS report calculated that 54 percent of 762,432 asylum cases filed between 2017 and 2023 weren’t resolved within 180 days, with some taking up to five years to adjudicate. Among the stalled asylum cases, 620 involved “potential national security concerns,” the report said.

The Biden administration tried to pass bipartisan border-security legislation this year, but it was derailed by former president Donald Trump - who evidently prefers blaming Democrats for the border mess to trying to fix it. President Biden finally issued an executive order this month imposing greater controls. But rather than making a forceful call to action, Biden did it quietly, over protests from progressive groups.

A solid, well-policed border is an essential condition of public safety. I pray that Biden doesn’t find out in the next few months just how dangerous our lack of bipartisan border policy could be.

David Ignatius is a Washington Post columnist.