Are the thousands of Chinese 'migrants' flooding into the U.S. really a sleeper army of spies and soldiers preparing for war?

Topped with razor wire that glints menacingly in the desert sun, a 30ft steel fence runs along part of the vast U.S.-Mexican border, providing an imposing bulwark in America’s war against illegal immigration.

But at a certain point, where the fence runs up against a rocky outcrop, there is a 4ft gap, loosely blocked with more razor wire.

Predictably, it fails to discourage a steady stream of migrants, who simply step around the wire and enter the promised land.

Asylum seekers walk into the U.S, where experts fear the arrivals could be a threat to security

The gap is so well-known to the undocumented asylum seekers crossing from Mexico into a remote corner of southern California, 60 miles east of San Diego, that it has been christened the ‘San Judas Break’ after a nearby Mexican town.

One local aid worker claims to have witnessed 150 migrants pass through the break in less than a minute and thousands are said to use it every week.

U.S. border agents are often on hand but they watch impassively as the migrants take the last few steps of their journey to a new life before waiting patiently to be taken into custody, processed and swiftly released — free to stay in America, probably for years, until their asylum case comes up.

This may sound like an all-too familiar scenario. But there’s one crucial difference: many of those coming in at the San Judas Break have not been Latin American — but Chinese.

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.

Some Chinese are apparently making the long journey from China to America via Asia and Africa, but many more are flying directly to Ecuador, exploiting the fact it doesn’t require them to have a visa, and then making their way overland to the U.S.-Mexico border.

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.

One of the migrants being processed by officials after crossing the border into the US

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. In the key border sector south of San Diego, more Chinese are crossing than Mexicans. Many of these arrivals insist they are no different from any other asylum seekers — fleeing joblessness and economic decline, and seeking political and religious freedoms.

U.S. politicians and officials accept that this may well be the driving force for at least some of the migrants. However, they also fear Beijing is attempting to exploit the chaos on the border by sneaking in Chinese who will do its ruthless bidding once they have been allowed to settle in the U.S. by a hopelessly flawed immigration system.

Given that both Democrat and Republican politicians have already expressed severe alarm about devious behaviour by Beijing in the U.S., many are unwilling to give the newcomers the benefit of the doubt. ‘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.

More Chinese migrants clamber over rocks as they make their way into the country

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.’

Even Nikki Haley, the rather more restrained former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who this week bowed out of the battle for the Republican presidential nomination, has expressed disquiet. ‘China knows the easiest way into America is through our southern border,’ she has said. ‘Close the border. Protect our homeland.’

Concern is undoubtedly growing and was recently fuelled by Bret Weinstein, a controversial writer and evolutionary biologist, who reported encountering deeply suspicious signs of Chinese government involvement during a visit to the Darien Gap region on the Panama-Colombia border.

Plagued by poisonous snakes, raging rivers and armed robbers, this notoriously dangerous jungle has become a bottleneck for migrants heading north.

The Panamanian government has set up transit camps for them, including at least one specifically for Chinese citizens, said Weinstein. While he and his companions were permitted to enter other camps and film the occupants, they were denied entry to the Chinese one.

Its inmates were mainly young men and, when Weinstein approached some as they ventured out to buy provisions, he found them wary and hostile. ‘It’s not a friendly migration,’ concluded Weinstein.

He believes the Chinese may even be preparing for war: ‘I have to wonder if this might not be a military force waiting for orders that is being deployed covertly in the midst of a migration that makes it hard for us to recognise it.’

Weinstein added: ‘I think we have to stop punishing ourselves for considering things that once seemed crazy.’

And politicians aren’t the only people taking the issue very seriously: some national security experts are, too.

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.

One immigrant is given a bowl of oatmeal by a volunteer as he waits to apply for asylum

‘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.’

Rebecca Grant, a national security analyst in Washington DC, told the Mail she considers the Chinese migrant numbers ‘truly shocking’, although she said it wasn’t unusual for them to be disproportionately young men — particularly given the rigours of the long journey they had undertaken from their homeland.

Rather than engineering the migration wave itself, she believes it is more likely that Beijing is trying to slip its agents in among ordinary Chinese asylum seekers.

‘It’s got to be very tempting for any Chinese spymaster to see this flow [of migrants] and just join in,’ she said. ‘Even if 95 per cent of these Chinese migrants are “no worries”, you’ve still got a real potential for a few to be up to no good.’

She added: ‘We know that [Chinese President] Xi Jinping is sparing no effort to spy on, degrade and challenge the U.S. in every way. In espionage it’s always about getting your assets in — why wouldn’t they take advantage of this?’

What they could be ‘taking advantage of’, say experts, is the chaos of the U.S. immigration processing system and the difficulty the FBI has in checking the identity of undocumented migrants, who routinely destroy their passports so they can’t be deported.

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.

Washington’s bipartisan suspicion of Chinese companies — which under Chinese law are required to bow to the demands of the Beijing regime — also extends to the online world.

Half of all U.S. states have banned Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok from government devices. The app is used by more than two-thirds of U.S. teenagers.

Critics also note that TikTok provides Chinese migrants with detailed instructions on where best to breach America’s southern border, including at the San Judas Break, even listing where to find food and the location of lavatories.

Brendan Carr, a senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), told the Mail that TikTok was a ‘very significant threat’ to the U.S. on various fronts.

First, he said it posed a serious national security threat as, contrary to TikTok’s assurances, all the data collected on the platform is sent back to China and allegedly analysed by Communist Party operatives.

Further, Mr Carr said TikTok allowed the Beijing regime’s propaganda arm to covertly criticise U.S. politicians ahead of the 2022 mid-term elections and is a crucial tool in improving China’s artificial intelligence capabilities.

Meanwhile, Beijing is determined to get its hooks not only into Chinese companies but also into Chinese citizens living abroad.

In 2022, the existence of a U.S.-wide network of covert Chinese police stations was revealed by the FBI.

These very unofficial outposts — including one hidden above a restaurant in Manhattan’s Chinatown — have allegedly been collecting intelligence, investigating ‘crimes’ against the Chinese state and intimidating expats.

Beijing, say observers, is tightening its grip on nationals who have left the country, especially those with family in China.

The U.S. prides itself on being a nation of immigrants. But as more and more Chinese nationals flood through its southern border, it’s not hard to see why these latest arrivals are finding America in a distinctly unwelcoming mood.