‘We can’t investigate them all’: Border Patrol chief warns Homeland Security Committee about influx of Chinese migrants ‘with CCP ties’ in closed session LAST YEAR
A US Border Patrol chief has warned that his agents are being overwhelmed by the flood of Chinese migrants crossing the border illegally and that they may be missing communist spies, DailyMail.com can reveal.
More than 24,000 Chinese migrants crossed US borders illegally in fiscal year 2023, compared to about 2,000 in 2022 and just 342 in 2021 — making them the fastest-growing demographic of illegal entrants.
Some have been found to have links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliate the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), but border chiefs are concerned that more may slip through their grasp.
Chief Patrol Agent Anthony Good of the Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector told the Homeland Security Committee during a private hearing last September that his agents were ‘trying their best to find out why (individuals from other continents) come’, but that ‘information can be hidden’ and ‘their agendas, their ideologies, the reason they come could be missed’.
Gloria Chavez, chief patrol agent for the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector, also told the committee in June that the massive increase in Chinese migrants had forced her agents to get a translation service, with each Chinese national taking up to seven hours to interview.
The high success rate of Chinese asylum applications is a long-standing trend, but it has come under the spotlight after a rise in illegal crossings by Chinese migrants last year
The interviews were shared with DailyMail.com by the committee.
Its chairman, Mark Green, said the surge in Chinese migrants was a ‘massive’ national security concern.
He said agents were ‘overwhelmed’ and many Chinese nationals were ‘released into the interior of the country with little regard for their country of origin’.
Green blamed Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas for making it ‘clear to the whole world that our borders are open.’
He added: “While it is true that some individuals may seek relief from authoritarian regimes, there is no way for our brave men and women on the front lines of this crisis to properly vet them all before they are effectively forced to release them – especially when countries like China won’t give us access to their various law enforcement databases.
‘My committee has been informed that some of these Chinese nationals have even been found to be affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – and these are just the ones we have been able to investigate.
‘While the CCP works to undermine and infiltrate our institutions and even military installations, Secretary Mayorkas has made it clear to the entire world that our borders are open.
‘This is simply unsustainable and the national security risks are massive.’
The surprise explosion in Chinese migrant crossings has sparked feverish speculation about why so many are suddenly making the arduous journey from East Asia, with some commentators suggesting Beijing may be smuggling some in as spies.
But immigration experts have said they believed the CCP was unlikely to send agents in this way, suggesting Xi Jinping would prefer a more direct route using work visas – as has been the case in the past.
Links to the CCP and PLA are common among Chinese citizens and do not necessarily mean they are operating as spies.
Meanwhile, startling US government data has revealed that mOr illegal Chinese migrants have been granted asylum over the past three years more than any other nationality, raising concerns that more will be encouraged to follow.
More successful asylum applications in the United States are made by Chinese migrants than any other nationality, according to government data
Chinese nationals also have the third highest success rate when it comes to US asylum applications
By 2022, Chinese nationals accounted for 14 percent of all successful ‘defensive’ asylum applications.
These claims are so-called because they are made by those defending against deportation proceedings, so they would include migrants who have crossed the border illegally.
China also tops the table for all types of successful asylum applications with 13 percent of all approved applications.
This is despite the fact that the Chinese were responsible for only 1 percent of all border encounters that year.
About two-thirds of Chinese asylum applications were successful between 2001 and 2021, the third-highest success rate of any country, according to an analysis of immigration court records by Syracuse University.
Last year, the figure was 55 per cent.
Complicating matters is Beijing’s refusal to repatriate its citizens when their asylum applications are rejected.
A former assistant foreign minister told DailyMail.com that Beijing would often deny that the migrants were actually Chinese.
The US is powerless in these situations.
Experts warn that the high success rate of Chinese migrants applying for asylum – coupled with Beijing’s refusal to take them back if they fail – acts as a “green light” for many considering taking their chances at the border.
Rebecca Grant, Ph.D., a national security analyst at IRIS Independent Research, said the ‘historically high rate of acceptance of claims from China’ combined with Beijing’s record of blocking repatriation acted as a ‘huge green light’ for migrants.
Chinese migrants arriving at the southern US-Mexico border turned up near California in December. (The migrants in the photo are not accused of having links to the CCP)
The migrants, reported to be mainly Chinese nationals, were shown neatly dressed and with proper luggage as they were processed after their illegal crossing. (The migrants in the photo are not accused of having links to the CCP)
Grant also raised questions about its implications for national security.
“I want to know who these people are and why they are here,” she told DailyMail.com. ‘The prevailing narrative is that China has economic problems; these are economic migrants.
“Let’s say 90 percent of them are. They should still come in legally, so I’m not in favor anyway.
‘But the really troubling part is that our opponents see this gaping hole on the southern border because of the huge loopholes that the Biden administration is allowing.
‘Of course China can take advantage of it.’
Beijing has a track record of using citizens working in the United States to steal trade secrets from American companies, looting everything from technology that can be used to make nuclear weapons to genetically modified seeds.
Grant suggested that the CCP may try to exploit America’s porous border by smuggling in a handful of spies among the hundred plus daily crossings.
But Michele Thoren Bond, a former assistant secretary of state, said this was unlikely.
“It would be a pretty haphazard way to deploy your agents,” she said, adding that Beijing would likely prefer a more direct method of infiltration.
Financial espionage has been carried out in the past by Chinese citizens with US visas.
However, Bond hit out at the Chinese government for its blocking of repatriation efforts.
She said that when she served as assistant secretary for consular affairs in the Obama administration, China was unwilling to take back its citizens.
“They said, ‘Well, we don’t know if they’re Chinese’.
‘If someone has been issued a US passport, we have a photo recognition program that allows us to take a picture of that person and run it through our system and see if we get a hit.
‘Now the Chinese do much more with ID in their population than we do.
“So it’s just not credible for them to say, ‘gosh, we have no way of knowing if these people are Chinese.’
A group of people, including many from China, walk along the wall after crossing the border into Mexico to seek asylum, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023, near Jacumba, California. (The migrants in the photo are not accused of having links to the CCP)
The number of illegal immigrants who have crossed the southern border in just three years has risen to over six million – more than the population of 33 separate US states. (The migrants in the photo are not accused of having links to the CCP)
Former immigration judge Paul Schmidt told DailyMail.com that the reasons for the high success rate of Chinese asylum applications were threefold.
Historically, it’s a hangover from congressional legislation that granted asylum to families fleeing China’s One-Child Policy.
Chinese migrants are also rarely unrepresented, with most arriving “lawyers”, Schmidt added, while Xi Jinping’s repressive rule also provided strong reasons for asylum applications to be accepted.
He agreed with Bond’s contention that the border was an unlikely route into the United States for Chinese spies, but added that it was not without concern.
“There’s a lot of reason to be suspicious of some of the things the Chinese government is doing,” he said. ‘The Chinese government is after the Chinese government.’
Most Chinese migrants seeking a new life in the United States usually first fly to Ecuador, where they do not need a visa.
Then they pay smugglers to take them through the dangerous jungle between Colombia and Panama to the United States, like hundreds of thousands of other migrants from Central and South America.
The sudden surge in Chinese nationals heading to the US is believed to be part of an exodus from the country triggered by draconian Covid restrictions and Xi Jinping’s repressive regime.