The number of Chinese crossing the southern U.S. border near San Diego has eclipsed the number of Mexicans in recent months, according to a new report.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has recorded 21,000 encounters with Chinese nationals in the San Diego sector since the fiscal year began in October, according to CBP data obtained by Fox news that is not yet public.
That’s more than the 18,700 encounters with Mexican nationals during the same period, and second only to the 28,000 Colombians CBP reportedly met in the sector.
Migrants from Brazil (8,700) and Ecuador (7,700) were the next largest groups, and other countries of origin include Turkey, Guinea, India, Guatemala and Peru, underscoring the increasingly global nature of migration at the US-Mexico border .
In fiscal year 2023, CBP reported that 24,048 Chinese citizens were apprehended by Border Patrol at the southern border – more than ten times more than the 1,970 arrests recorded during fiscal year 2022, and just 323 the year before.
The number of Chinese nationals entering the US through the southern border has soared since 2021, amid a mass exodus from the oppressive communist country.
A group of people, including many from China, walk along the wall after crossing the border with Mexico to seek asylum near Jacumba, California, on October 24
Chinese nationals have historically had a high success rate with asylum claims in America, and Beijing often refuses to accept the deportation of its citizens whose asylum status has been denied.
The high success rate of staying in the US has been a lure for many Chinese to flee the communist country and seek a better life, after years of brutal pandemic lockdowns in China and a stagnant economy that has undermined confidence in the ruling Communist Party shocked.
Because Chinese citizens can fly to Ecuador without a visa, many now take the arduous 5,000-kilometer route through the Darien Gap to reach the US, a journey so popular it has its own name in Chinese: walk the line, or ‘zouxian’.
“This wave of emigration reflects the despair toward China,” Cai Xia, editor-in-chief of the Yibao online commentary site and a former professor at the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Party School in Beijing, told the AP last year.
“They have lost hope for the country’s future,” said Cai, who now lives in the US. -of families.’
But the trend has raised national security concerns among some officials, who fear some among the asylum seekers may have nefarious motives.
Chief Patrol Agent Anthony Good, of the Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector, told the Homeland Security Committee during a closed hearing last September that his agents “did their best to find out why (individuals are coming from other continents),” but that ” information can be hidden’ and ‘their agendas, their ideologies and the reason for their arrival can be missed’.
According to government data, more successful asylum claims in the US are made by Chinese migrants than by any other nationality
A group of people, including many from China, walk along the wall in California after crossing the border with Mexico to seek asylum in a file photo
Gloria Chavez, chief patrol agent for the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector, also told the commission in June that the massive flow of Chinese migrants had forced her agents to use a translation service, with each Chinese national taking up to seven hours for an interview.
The interviews were shared by the committee with DailyMail.com earlier this month.
The Republican chairman, Mark Green, claimed the wave of Chinese migrants was a “major” national security problem.
He said officers were “overwhelmed,” with many Chinese nationals “released domestically with little regard for their countries of origin.”
Green accused Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the target of impeachment by House Republicans, of “making it clear to the entire world that our borders are open.”
He added: “While it is true that some individuals seek relief from authoritarian regimes, there is no way for our brave men and women on the front lines of this crisis to adequately investigate all of them before effectively forcing them to be released.” – especially when countries like China won’t grant us access to their various law enforcement databases.
“My committee has learned that some of these Chinese nationals even appear to have ties to the People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – and these are precisely the ones we have been able to investigate.”
An asylum-seeking migrant from China holds up his passport and paperwork as he was photographed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in California earlier this month
The migrants are headed to the West Coast because that may be their final destination, Border Congressman Tony Gonzales (R, Texas) told DailyMail.com.
“While I’ve talked to different agencies about why some communities (migrant groups) go to one place and others go to another, it depends on which cartel controls that pipeline,” Gonzales explained.
“It’s very clear that the Sinaloa Cartel is the one controlling that operation and sending more Chinese into the California corridor…the California/Arizona corridor that they control. That’s half the equation.
‘The other half is where the population goes. Where are the large populations of Asian Americans located? In California, New York is a different area, but that area on the West Coast is a big population center for them.”