Slow-Motion Invasion Update: The Chinese Spy Balloon & ICE's annual report
More has come out about the Chinese Spy Balloon incident
In October, More To The Story (MTS) recapped a congressional hearing looking into Chinese activity on U.S. military bases.
Part of that article looked back at the Chinese Spy balloon that President Biden allowed to cross nearly the entire country before giving the order to shoot it down off the east coast of the U.S.
Additionally, MTS noted that outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley had stated on the Sept. 17 edition of CBS Sunday Morning that the spy equipment on the balloon wasn’t activated and captured no intelligence as it drifted across the country.
As of Dec. 28, Milley's claim has a potential hole in it.
NBC News reported the balloon had apparently accessed an American internet provider during its journey, ostensibly to send data or receive orders from China.
U.S. intelligence officials have determined that the Chinese spy balloon that flew across the U.S. this year used an American internet service provider to communicate, according to two current and one former U.S. official familiar with the assessment.
The balloon connected to a U.S.-based company, according to the assessment, to send and receive communications from China, primarily related to its navigation. Officials familiar with the assessment said it found that the connection allowed the balloon to send burst transmissions, or high-bandwidth collections of data over short periods of time.
This news comes amid a new record-breaking surge of illegal immigrants at the U.S. southern border both for the month of December and for the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2024, per FOX News' Bill Melugin.
Melugin also reported the number of illegal immigrants on ICE’s non-detained docket "soared from 3.7 million in FY 2021 to 6.2 million in FY 2023."
More To The Story
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data for the past two years has shown a huge spike in the number of Chinese nationals, mainly males of military age, crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
In FY 2022, CBP clocked just under 2,000 Chinese nationals crossing the border. Just in the initial months of FY 2023, the number shot up to 4,300 encounters, not including "gotaways."
In early 2023, CBP officials told FOX News apprehensions of Chinese nationals at the border were up 800% over the same months the previous year.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has released its FY 2023 report. The report includes activities by Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).
Keep in mind when reading the report that in the last two years under President Biden, 2.3 million and 2.4 million illegal migrants crossed the U.S. border with Mexico. The highest number seen under former President Trump was 851,000 in 2019.
Highlights from the ICE report related to the border include:
HSI conducted 33,108 criminal arrests, identified and/or assisted 1,806 child victims of exploitation, as well as seized over 1.2 million pounds of narcotics, over $949 million in criminally derived currency and assets, and over $148 million in virtual currency.
HSI’s Asset Forfeiture Unit had a big year, seizing "4,336,939,968 individual items, worth an estimated $1,574,224,825 across 30,616 distinct incidents."
The HSI-led Visa Security Program (VSP) is an HSI-led counterterrorism program that deals with visa security activities and related training globally and works to prevent threats/terrorists from getting into the country. The report says VSP "prevented 8,412 individuals with links to terrorism from traveling to the United States," which is a 102% increase over the 4,159 individuals in FY 2022.
ICE/ERO expelled 139 individuals identified or suspected as terrorists; a 148.2% increase over the previous FY. The previous high was 58 in 2019. Again, these are individuals caught and do not include the unknown number of "gotaways."
Of concern related to terrorists entering the U.S., a recent report in the Washington Post outlines that Chinese military hackers, affiliated with the People's Liberation Army, have reportedly targeted about two dozen critical American entities over the past year, focusing on disrupting key infrastructure such as power and water utilities, communications, and transportation systems.
The Chinese campaign, known as Volt Typhoon, aims to develop capabilities to sow panic and chaos or impede logistics in the event of a U.S.-China conflict in the Pacific. Targets include a water utility in Hawaii, a major West Coast port, at least one oil and gas pipeline, and an attempted breach of Texas's power grid operator. The hackers seek to pre-position themselves for potential disruption during a conflict, impacting U.S. power projection into Asia. While the intrusions haven't caused disruptions yet, they highlight China's evolving cyber strategy from espionage to potential infrastructure attacks. Chinese Nationals inside the U.S. through illegal crossings on the southern border add a physical threat to the seriousness of China’s cyber attack capabilities.
ERO's "high priority removals," which in addition to terrorists, include gang members, and human rights violators, included 3,406 known or suspected gang members and just six human rights violators. The gang number is 27.7% higher than the previous year and the human rights violators number was the same as the previous year.
Trump's gang member removals from 2018-2020 are well more than double that of Biden's from 2021-2023; 21,517 and 8,791 respectively. See Figure 28. FY 2018 – FY 2023 ICE Removals of Known or Suspected Gang Members
ERO conducted 170,590 administrative arrests (+19.5% from last year) and 91,497 at-large arrests (+7.2% increase). These arrests included individuals with criminal histories and a wide array of violent crimes.
Of the total arrests by ICE in FY 2023, 43.3% had criminal convictions or pending charges, compared to 32.5% in FY 2022. Among the 73,822 individuals with criminal histories, there were 290,178 charges and convictions, averaging four per individual.
Notable charges or convictions included 1,713 for homicide, 1,655 for kidnapping, 4,390 for sexual assaults, 33,209 for assaults, 3,097 for robberies, 6,964 for burglaries, and 7,520 for weapons offenses.
Scroll down to the chart labeled Figure 5 on page 14 to view the administrative charges by category - the totals are staggering.
Detainers had fallen in 2020 likely due to the pandemic but the number plummeted in 2021. The number of detainers issued under Biden, 270,127 (2021-2023), is a bit more than half that of Trump, with 464,867 (2018-2020).
The number of non-detained individuals on court dockets has nearly doubled under Biden. Per the report, "the non-detained docket climbed by 30.3% from 4.7 million noncitizens in FY 2022 to more than 6.2 million noncitizens in FY 2023. Comparatively, the non-detained was at 3.26 million in FY 2020 and 3.6 million in FY 2021."
ERO removed 142,580 noncitizens to more than 180 countries.
Of the total, 69,902 (49%) had criminal histories, "with an average of 3.8 convictions and/or charges per individual." Crimes included 1,457 charges or convictions for homicide; 1,450 kidnappings; 3,809 sexual assaults; 26,714 assaults; 2,760 robberies; 5,410 burglaries; and 6,114 weapon offenses.
ERO removals under Biden (273,768 from 2021-23) seriously lag behind that of Trump (709,227 from 2018-20). The difference represents a 62% decrease under Biden's tenure so far.
Additionally, Trump's numbers for removing individuals for criminal reasons dwarfs Biden's record.
The removal of unaccompanied illegal minors (UCs) by the Biden administration (2,100 from 2021-2023) is a fraction of that under Trump (15,978 from 2018-20). The difference between the totals is an 87% drop.
Finally, 137,275 unaccompanied illegal minors were encountered at the southern border in FY 2023, yet ICE only removed 212 of them.
Where are these minors?
Apparently, they are not at the $50M facility rented by HHS in Greensboro.
One other item of importance to North Carolina is in ICE’s annual report - the expansion in Spring 2023 of the "National Gangs and Violent Crimes Unit expanded the Operation Community Shield Violent Gang Task Forces (VGTF) initiative to the HSI Charlotte area of responsibility."