Chinese immigrants are using Mexican IDs to facilitate their passage to the United States amid a huge increase in arrivals from the communist country.
The disconcerting trend was revealed in new images of the San Diego border, where the number of Chinese citizens entering from Mexico so far this year is already more than double the total for all of last year.
The cartels are believed to make and sell the IDs so that immigrants traveling to the United States from Asia and elsewhere can pass checkpoints by Mexican police as they travel through the country.
Migrants then destroy or discard the documents when they cross the U.S. border, making it harder for authorities to identify them and easing their path to asylum.
Video shared with DailyMail.com shows Bill Wells, mayor of El Cajon, a city about 17 miles east of San Diego, inspecting dozens of cards left by Chinese nationals at a crossing point between Jacumba Hot Springs and Campo.
Bill Wells, mayor of El Cajon, a city in San Diego County, inspects dozens of Chinese IDs found near the US-Mexico border. Those in blue are issued in China, but those in yellow are Mexican IDs for Chinese citizens.
The cartels are believed to make and sell the IDs so that immigrants traveling to the United States from Asia and elsewhere can pass checkpoints by Mexican police as they travel through the country.
More than 24,000 Chinese immigrants crossed US borders illegally in fiscal year 2023, compared to about 2,000 in 2022 and just 342 in 2021.
Wells seems baffled by the fact that most were issued by the Mexican government, describing cardholders as “temporary residents,” “visitors” or “humanitarian workers” in the Central American country.
He later told DailyMail.com that they were probably being used by Chinese immigrants so they could show Mexican authorities that they had a reason to be in their country.
The mayor added that he was surprised by the “large amount” of discarded documents he saw during his visit to the border on Friday night.
“My worst fears came true,” he said. ‘I talked to the border patrol guys, they’re all ready to quit. They say it’s incredibly out of control.
‘They think people don’t care and have no idea how big the problem is.
“The American people really need to realize how important this issue is.”
Wells also showed a Chinese merchant navy passport that its owner had cut up and discarded at the border.
He explained that this was “probably because they wanted to apply for asylum and if you have a passport and ways to be tracked… you don’t want to be tracked.”
“You want to say you’re here with nothing and ask for asylum.”
The cards had been collected by local gun store owner Cory Gautereaux after they were left scattered around his property.
There were some from South and Central America, as well as the Middle East, but most came from China.
Cory Gautereaux, a San Diego resident and gun store owner, has collected dozens of foreign IDs that have been discarded by immigrants on his property near the Mexican border.
It is believed that migrants leave them behind once they arrive in the United States so that they cannot be tracked.
Mayor Wells shows a Chinese merchant marine passport that its owner had cut up and discarded at the border.
San Diego has seen more than twice as many Chinese citizens cross its border in the first half of this fiscal year than in all of 2023.
Most fly to Tijuana before paying cartels up to $35,000 to take them to the United States.
Wells also visited part of the border wall where makeshift ropes had been made from old cloth to help immigrants climb.
He said border agents had told him that particular section was being targeted because there were no cameras there.
The mayor said that once the migrants crossed the border, they would be picked up by a bus that would take them to a processing center.
From there they would be sent to a transit center near San Ysidro, where they would later be released.
It comes as San Diego last month became the top region along the southern border for migrant arrivals for the first time since 1999.
Migrant arrests in San Diego reached 8,989 during the week ending April 16, according to figures the agency published in X. Meanwhile, Tucson, which had previously been the region with the highest number of crossings, had 7,500 arrests during the week ending April 19.
Recent data shows the immigration crisis is shifting west toward border states like Arizona and California amid a crackdown on Texas by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.
Mexican authorities have also beefed up security on their side of the border with Texas.
The volume of arriving migrants exceeds resources in San Diego, and authorities report that up to 1,000 people a day are being released at the city’s train and bus stops.
Crossings in the sector increased from 31,562 in February to 33,784 in March, although this total was slightly lower than the 34,371 migrants who entered San Diego in December.
San Diego has seen more than twice as many Chinese citizens in the first half of this fiscal year than in all of 2023.
The Chinese immigrants described traveling from China, Taiwan, Turkey and then South America before flying to Mexico. Multiple stops are necessary since Chinese citizens cannot fly directly from their home country to the United States. Above, some who entered legally with procedures provided by the government
A Chinese migrant camp near Jacumba, California, has signs showing Chinese asylum seekers where to surrender to U.S. Border Patrol agents.
Last month, a dozen migrants washed up on a beach in Carlsbad, a city about 30 miles north of San Diego.
The boat passed by a few meters of what appeared to be a surfer in the water as it quickly passed and approached the beach at very high speed.
After beaching the boat on the sand, the migrants got out and ran toward the row of waterfront houses and were picked up by waiting black vans.
The cars left in such a hurry that one woman nearly fell when the vehicle began to move before she could fully climb into the back seats.
DailyMail.com has previously revealed that a US Border Patrol chief warned that his agents are being overwhelmed by the number of Chinese migrants crossing the border illegally and that communist spies could be disappearing.
Chief Border Patrol Agent Anthony Good of the Border Patrol’s El Paso sector told the Homeland Security Committee during a private hearing in September last year that his agents were “doing everything they can to find out why [individuals from other continents are] come”, but that “information can be hidden” and “their agendas, their ideologies and the reason for their arrival could be overlooked.