Massive Scale of Chinese Illegal Immigration Threatens National Security

SURGE IN CHINESE CROSSINGS PART OF BROADER BORDER FAILURE

The Biden-Harris Administration enabled the most significant surge in illegal Chinese immigration in American history. The Trump Administration’s task is to address the continuing threat posed by the presence of these illegal immigrants, prevent further illegal crossings, and ensure the ultimate removal of illegal People’s Republic of China (PRC) nationals from the country.

The presence of hundreds of thousands of prc illegals undermines national security

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence under both the first Trump and Biden Administrations has repeatedly warned that single adult illegals are especially vulnerable to Chinese government coercion, with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leveraging them into intelligence work by pressuring their families back home. Such leveraging of overseas Chinese citizens has been extensively documented among legal entrants to the United States. The inherent vulnerability of illegal border crossers gives the CCP even more control over them. Simultaneously, the U.S. government has less visibility into the identities and activities of illegal entrants than it does into the identities and activities of their legally documented counterparts.

Under the Biden Administration, illegal immigrants from all nations into the United States faced few serious roadblocks to entry. The Biden Administration actively implemented policy changes that dismantled most of the enhancements made to border security policy in the first Trump term.

Such measures included the following:

• Ending the Migrant Protection Protocols or “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required those applying for asylum to remain in the first safe third country they arrived in during the adjudication of their asylum claims;
• Refusing to enforce Section 235(b)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, a law that punishes the destruction of documents by allowing for expedited removal in cases where individuals present themselves as asylees with no proper documents to identify them; and
• Refusing to utilize Section 243(d) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to punish countries from which illegal immigrants are coming and where they also refuse to accept repatriation of such illegal immigrants.

Other important changes applying to PRC nationals during the Biden Administration included:

• Lowering standards in the vetting process specifically for PRC nationals in mid-late 2023—from a battery of 40 questions to only five, as reported by the Daily Caller;
• Tolerating China’s ongoing behavior as a designated “recalcitrant” country, alongside numerous “negotiations” to remedy the situation, leading to Chinese nationals being nearly unremovable outside of a few hundred whose removal is being touted as a “large-scale repatriation”; and
• Excluding PRC nationals from the few mitigation measures, such as ankle bracelets, that are sometimes used for illegal entrants from countries of concern.

Given that PRC nationals seeking to exit China are required to obtain permission for their departure, it is likely that the CCP either tolerates or encourages illegal migration to the United States.