The number of Chinese migrants crossing the southern border illegally is growing, The New York Times reported.
More than 24,000 Chinese citizens were encountered in fiscal year 2023. Fewer than 15,000 Chinese migrants were caught crossing the border illegally during the 10 previous years combined, the newspaper reported Friday.
"The largest reason, for me, is the political environment," Mark Xu, 35, a Chinese elementary and middle school English teacher, told the Times in February, as he waited to board a boat in Necoclí, Colombia, a beach town in the north. China was so stifling, he added, it had become "difficult to breathe."
The problem is growing but has been on the radar of U.S. officials for months.
"We write to you with concern that over 18,000 Chinese nationals have illegally crossed the southern border in Fiscal Year 2023, with some of these individuals having ties to the CCP's [Chinese Communist Party's] People's Liberation Army (PLA)," wrote Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and four other Republicans in a Sept. 20 letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorcas.
"July set the record for nationwide encounters with Chinese nationals with just over 6,100. 94.8 percent of Chinese national encounters in FY23 have been single adults. This trend poses a significant threat to our national security and warrants immediate attention and action from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)."
The lawmakers expressed concerns about the lack of vetting of the Chinese migrants and the dangers they could pose to national security.
"Furthermore, it is our understanding that not a single one of these individuals encountered has been detained for any length of time but rather benefitted from this administration's policy of catch and release," the letter read.
National security experts are expressing similar concerns about the increasing numbers.
Newsweek reported in October that Rebecca Grant, a national security analyst at IRIS Independent Research, said: "I'm 99 percent certain that at least a little bit of this is [the] Chinese military infiltrating for reasons harmful to our national security. Is it one person, is it a hundred, is it a thousand? We don't know, but the fact that we have to ask this question is just outrageous.
"Clearly, that border is a big opportunity. Some of those people want to come here and have a better way of life, but I think some of those Chinese [nationals] quite possibly are here to spy and report back at a minimum."
Charles Kim ✉
Charles Kim, a Newsmax general assignment writer, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years in reporting on news and politics.
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