The number of Chinese nationals crossing the southern border of the United States 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’s not public yet.
That’s more than the 18,700 encounters with Mexican citizens during the same period, and second only to the 28,000 Colombians CBP reported encountering in the sector.
Immigrants from Brazil (8,700) and Ecuador (7,700) were the next largest groups, and other countries of origin included Turkey, Guinea, India, Guatemala and Peru, underscoring the increasingly global nature of border migration between the United States and Mexico.
In fiscal year 2023, CBP reported that 24,048 Chinese nationals were detained by Border Patrol on the southern border, more than 10 times more than the 1,970 arrests recorded during fiscal year 2022 and just 323 the year before.
The number of Chinese citizens entering the United States across the southern border has increased 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 on October 24 near Jacumba, California.
Chinese citizens have historically had a high success rate with asylum claims in the United States, and Beijing often refuses to accept the deportation of its citizens whose asylum status is rejected.
The high success rate in staying in the United States 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 have shaken faith in the ruling Party. Communist.
Since Chinese citizens can fly to Ecuador without a visa, many are now taking the arduous 3,000-mile route through the Darien Gap to reach the United States, a journey popular enough to have its own name in Chinese: walking down the line, or ‘zouxian’.
“This wave of emigration reflects desperation toward China,” Cai Xia, editor-in-chief of the Yibao online comment site and a former professor at the Central School of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, told the AP last year.
“They have lost hope in the future of the country,” said Cai, who now lives in the United States. “You see among them educated and uneducated, white-collar workers, as well as small business owners and people from well-off families.” -outside families.’
But the trend has raised national security concerns from some officials, who fear that some asylum seekers have nefarious motives.
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.
According to government data, Chinese immigrants file more successful asylum claims in the United States than any other nationality.
A group of people, including many from China, walk along the California wall 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 Committee in June that the massive increase in Chinese immigrants had forced her agents to hire a translation service, and that each Chinese citizen was taking up to seven hours to interview.
The committee shared the interviews with DailyMail.com earlier this month.
Its Republican chairman, Mark Green, said the increase in Chinese immigrants was a “massive” national security concern.
He said officers were “overwhelmed” and that many Chinese nationals were “released inside without regard to their country of origin.”
Green blamed Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the target of impeachment by House Republicans, for making “it clear to the entire world that our borders are open.”
He added: “While it is true that some people may be seeking 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 being effectively forced to release them. particularly when countries like China do not allow us to access their various police 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 those are only the ones we have been able to examine.”
A Chinese asylum-seeking migrant holds his passport and documents while being photographed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in California earlier this month.
Migrants are heading to the West Coast because that may be their final destination, border congressman Tony Gonzales (R, Texas) told DailyMail.com.
‘As I have spoken with different agencies about why some communities (groups of migrants) go to one place and others go to another, one: it depends on which cartel controls that pipeline,’ Gonzales explained.
‘It is very clear that the Sinaloa Cartel is the one that controls this operation and sends more Chinese to the California corridor… California/Arizona corridor that they control. That’s half the equation.
‘The other half is where the population will go. Where do large populations of Asian Americans tend to be? In California, New York is another area, but that area of the west coast is a big population center for them.