Though it’s been a week and half since President Trump assumed office, he hasn’t fixed everything yet. Has he fixed this? In June 2024, the Daily Caller’s Philip Lenzycki reported on a Chinese “police agent” operation—“police agent” being a euphemism for Chinese Communist Party agent—running illegal immigrants into the United States.
There’s a Telegram group and everything (“Chinese ‘Cyber Police’ Agent Runs Online Network Helping Illegal Immigrants Flood into US,” June 17, 2024). As of mid-2024, the Chinese-language American Self-Guided Tour Channel, a place to discuss the ins and outs of illegal immigration and share “documents detailing specific routes to the U.S.,” had over 8,000 members.
Documents in the Telegram channel translated by the [Daily Caller News Foundation] identify U.S. border wall gaps, instruct Chinese nationals on how to answer questions from Border Patrol agents and provide scripts for requesting asylum.
Furthermore, the channel is overseen by an individual who spreads Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda, bans accounts who fail to toe the Party line and identifies himself as a Chinese police officer.
“We’re allowing an element that is completely beyond our law to be established firmly as a beachhead in the United States of America, and the people of America are going to pay a severe price, much worse than we are paying even now,” North Carolina Republican Rep. Dan Bishop said after learning about the findings of the DCNF’s investigation.
Customs and Border Protection data shows that the overwhelming majority of the roughly 48,000 Chinese illegal immigrants encountered by U.S. authorities in 2024 have been single adults—and experts warn that “military-aged males” make up the lion’s share.
Bishop described the 1,100% spike in Chinese illegal immigrants since fiscal year 2022 as “historically unprecedented,” and told the DCNF that the inner workings of China’s human smuggling networks have largely remained a mystery to lawmakers up until now.
The advice proffered on the channel includes what to do if you’re deported: possibly, start all over again with a fake identity.
But this suggestion comes with a caveat. “You can try alternate identities, [but] the difficulty is relatively high and Trump may invite you to a meeting with state security agents in the future.” Of course, nobody providing this advice for the CCP channel was worried that the incumbent president at the time, Biden, would hassle anybody about using fake ID.
How to find out
Is there a way to distinguish between refugees who really do face persecution back in China—hardly a rare or implausible scenario—and persons manipulating the system at the behest of the Party?
Not on the basis of a few boilerplate questions alone.
The Chinese government sends agents all over the world to harass and kidnap Chinese nationals who have fled China simply because they are dissidents or are members of China-targeted groups like Uyghurs, Falun Gong, Tibetans. These refugees don’t seem like the likeliest recruits for a CCP-led, propaganda-and-censorship-laden operation to get Chinese nationals into the United States. Still, maybe a fair number of innocents indeed fleeing repression in China would be willing to parrot the CCP line in a Telegram group in order to make it to the United States.
Better vetting must be part of the answer. At present, though, President Trump has only “indefinitely paused” the U.S. program for admitting refugees.
Also see:
Daily Caller: “Biden Admin’s Watered Down Vetting Process For Chinese Illegal Immigrants Poses National Security Risk, Experts Warn”
“Unfortunately, under the Biden administration, Border Patrol agents have been instructed that when processing Chinese nationals, they should conduct short, basic interviews that include only generic background questions, instead of in-depth interviews,” Republican Rep. Dan Bishop, chair of the subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability, said during the hearing. “In other words, there is no serious vetting.”
“How likely is it that someone showing up at the border is going to admit that they are here to do the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party or perhaps the [People’s Liberation Army]?” Bishop asked. “Instead, that person will likely provide the answers their smugglers told them to give Border Patrol.”
