In the 2023 fiscal year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported over 24,000 Chinese nationals were apprehended at the southern border.
According to the New York Post, this is up 10 times from the 1,970 arrests from the previous fiscal year. And, this is a 7,000 percent increase from 2021, where 323 Chinese nationals crossed the border. This was during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We know that China is using everything that they have, every bit of espionage, to spy on our military and our high technology," said Rebecca Grant, Ph.D., a national security analyst at IRIS Independent Research told Newsweek of the spike in numbers. "And we know China's government is not our friend, so this dramatic upswing, I think it could definitely present a potential national security risk."
"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," Grant added. "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."
Reportedly, many of the Chinese nationals crossing the border are military-age men.
Chinese nationals crossing into US from Mexico border reaches new high, sparking national security concerns https://t.co/l80hNSA6kr pic.twitter.com/JOGeaKYSwN
— New York Post (@nypost) November 2, 2023
This week, figures released by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection showed that a record number of people from India were intercepted at the southern border this past year. And, 1,600 crossed from America’s northern border. Since 2007, the total number of illegal border crossings by Indians in a fiscal year has exceeded 5,000 only four times, which Townhall covered.
“It really is pointing to this huge trend of mass migration worldwide,” Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an analyst for the Migration Policy Institute, told WSJ of the numbers. “We’re seeing that people from other countries are making their way to the U.S. border, when traditionally they haven’t.