Chinese trafficking network uncovered
Chinese companies are also buying up land near U.S. military bases
A Chinese trafficking network was recently uncovered by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The news outlet investigated a Chinese-language Telegram channel called "American Self-Guided Tour Channel" that assists Chinese nationals in illegally entering the United States.
The Telegram channel has over 8,000 members and provides resources for evading border authorities, including identifying border wall gaps and scripts for asylum claims. The channel's administrator, "Jack W," claims to work for Chinese state security and bans users who criticize China.
There's been a significant increase in Chinese illegal immigrants, with CBP data showing about 48,000 encounters in 2024, mostly single adults.
The channel contains detailed guides for travel routes from China through South America to the US-Mexico border and provides instructions on how to answer questions from Border Patrol agents and craft asylum claims.
"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,” NC Rep. Dan Bishop told The Daily Caller.
The network’s existence, coupled with the sharp spike in military aged males from China illegally crossing the U.S. border, presents a huge national security risk.
Bishop chaired a May hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee’s Oversight, Investigations and Accountability subcommittee which delved into the rise of Chinese cyber threats, but also the nearly 8,000% increase in Chinese illegal aliens entering the U.S. since March 2021.
"The experts that testified before the Subcommittee on Oversight that I chaired when we had a hearing on this established fairly persuasively that there is no vetting [of illegal aliens],” Bishop said. “It's a perfunctory, quick interview, and they move on into the country and are released."
Paid subscribers can read more about the May 2024 Congressional hearing:
More To The Story
Chinese entities have been buying up farms and land near U.S. military bases, according to an analysis by the NY Post.
The analysis found 19 bases across the country which are “in close proximity to land bought up by Chinese entities and could be exploited by spies working for the communist nation,” per the NY Post.
The article lists “some of the military’s most strategically important bases” including North Carolina’s Fort Liberty (formerly Fort Bragg).
Other key bases identified were Fort Cavazos (formerly Fort Hood) in Killeen, Texas; Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego, California, and MacDill air force base in Tampa, Florida.
Per the NY Post’s own graphic (below), large amounts of farmland were bought up by China surrounding Fort Liberty.
More from the NY Post:
The Department of Homeland Security has also warned of the threat of Chinese spies slipping over the US Southern border, disguised as among the more than 30,000 who have already been admitted this since October last year. Those spies will likely “employ economic espionage” and “seek to illicitly acquire our technologies and intellectual property” according to DHS’s Homeland Threat Assessment 2024.
Morgan Lerette, a former contractor for private military contractor Blackwater is sounding the alarm.
“The Chinese are, or will, use this farmland to learn more about US military capabilities, movements, and technology,” Lerette told The Post.
“This will allow them to better understand how to transition their military from a defensive strategy to an expeditionary one,” he said, adding they’ll figure out “how to move forces quickly for conflicts such as taking Taiwan and how and when US forces would respond to their incursions based on troop movement at these bases,” he explained.
He added China will be watching troop movements into and out of bases in an attempt to form an idea of the patterns of behavior and movements.
The NY Post cites data from the Farm Service Agency of the USDA showing Chinese investors owned 349,442 acres of US farmland as of Dec. 31, 2022, and that the biggest investors so far has been “secretive billionaire Sun Guangxin, who has deep ties to the communist party and spent an estimated $110 million buying up land next to Laughlin Air Force Base in Val Verde County, a training ground for military pilots.” Guangxin owns 40% of the farm land being bought up.
Coupled with the Chinese farm land buys are the series of reports of attempted military base breaches by Chinese nationals posing as tourists but also other foreign nationals attempting to force their way onto bases.
North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis introduced legislation in 2023 called the SOIL Act. The bill aimed to increase transparency over land purchases that could pose a threat to national security. The SOIL Act never made it out of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
Similarly, the North Carolina General Assembly took a crack at protecting farmland purchase by foreign entities during the 2023 long session.
House Majority Leader Rep. John Bell (R-Wayne) filed House Bill 463, the N.C. Farmland and Military Protection Act. Like the SOIL Act, the bill never made it out of a Senate committee.