And given that most of the thousands of Chinese pouring into America are ‘adult males of military age’, this strange phenomenon is deeply worrying politicians, officials and security experts in Washington.
They fear this may not be so much a migratory trend as an exercise in infiltration by Chinese citizens acting on direct orders from America’s greatest international adversary, the Chinese Communist Party.
An adversary that has recently been accused of all manner of underhand operations in the U.S.: using spy balloons to target sensitive military bases and making suspicious purchases of nearby land, running a network of covert police stations across the U.S. and even intentionally flooding America with lethal drugs and malign social media.
More than 37,000 Chinese citizens were arrested for illegally crossing the southern border of the U.S. in 2023, according to US Customs and Border Protection.
That number is nearly ten times the total in 2022 — and 50 times more than in 2021.
Under the Biden administration, whose reversal of Trump’s tough immigration policies has been blamed for a huge surge in illegal migration, the number of U.S. Border Patrol encounters with Chinese illegal immigrants asylum seekers continues to grow.
Since the beginning of the U.S. government’s fiscal year in October, the U.S. Border Patrol has already apprehended more than 21,000 Chinese migrants.
‘I’m not saying China is going to invade the United States but, if we were to defend Taiwan, you have to think this is part of some plan or strategy — you’d be foolish not to,’ said Mark Green, Republican chairman of the House committee on Homeland Security, in Congress.
His colleagues in the Senate warned last September that the influx posed a ‘significant threat’ to national security and claimed not one of the Chinese asylum seekers had been detained ‘for any length of time’, despite some of them having links with the Chinese Communist Party and People’s Liberation Army.
Donald Trump has said he believes Beijing has directed men of military age to infiltrate the U.S, while tough-talking Florida governor Ron DeSantis has described rocketing Chinese migrant numbers as ‘not normal’, adding: ‘Our country is being invaded.’
Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents rank-and-file Border Patrol agents, confirms that the majority of the Chinese border crossers are single adult males of military age.
‘That is a very scary prospect,’ he said. ‘We know that China does not like us, we know that we are in the crosshairs of China.
‘At best, they’re just coming here for a better life or for a better job. At worst, they’re coming here [as] part of the Chinese government.’
And if they are hostile foreign agents, what could they do in the U.S.?
Experts cite various covert activities, including espionage, coercion, counter-intelligence, cyber hacking and surveillance.
If the two countries were to get involved in a war — most likely if China invades independent Taiwan — this list could be extended to include sabotage.
‘What we know already is that the Chinese are seeking vulnerabilities in our infrastructure, whether that’s power grid, cyber, you name it,’ said a national security analyst.
‘We know they want to do things like watch take-offs and landings at military bases, we know they are seeking ways to infiltrate in cyberspace . . . so [the migrants] can very easily flow into any ongoing operations that China is already running in the U.S.’
While there’s endless coverage nowadays of the damage that can be done by internet hackers, much of America’s infrastructure, such as dams and power grids, remains offline. ‘So some of this still requires boots on the ground,’ the analyst added.
Those boots may even end up being army boots. A new bill introduced in Congress last month — and obviously fuelling the unease — would allow undocumented migrants to serve in the U.S. military and so get U.S. citizenship in as little as 180 days.
The most memorable recent example of Chinese penetration of U.S. territory was the giant high-altitude balloon that flew across North American airspace in early 2023.
China insisted it was only a weather balloon blown off course but, after the U.S. shot it down as it ‘drifted’ near a highly sensitive air force base in Montana, they discovered it was packed with spying equipment.
Other intrusions have been more insidious. Chinese ownership of American farmland has soared 20-fold in a decade from £63 million in 2010 to £1.4 billion in 2020.
Several Chinese firms have in recent years bought, or tried to buy, large plots of land near U.S. military bases.
In one of the most notorious cases, the city of Grand Forks in sparsely populated North Dakota announced in 2021 that Chinese company Fufeng Group wanted to build a giant corn mill there on a vast muddy stretch of land.
It was welcomed locally as a major economic development — until sceptics pointed out the 370-acre plot happened to be only 12 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base, home to some of America’s key intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.
After more than a year of heated discussions, during which Fufeng vehemently denied claims its mill would be used for spying or sabotage operations, the U.S. Air Force announced the project ‘presents a significant threat to national security’ and it was ended.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...spies-soldiers-preparing-war-tom-leonard.html
