Unprecedented Numbers of Chinese, Russian Illegal Immigrants Are Crossing Border, Posing Security Risks: Immigration Experts

Mark Morgan, acting commissioner Customs and Border Protection, speaks at the National Press Club in Washington on Dec. 20, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Unprecedented numbers of Chinese and Russians, who may pose national security threats, are entering the United States as illegal immigrants from Mexico because President Joe Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas refuse to enforce laws and regulations designed to protect the United States, three immigration experts say.

“We literally apprehend immigrants from China. Do you think we are getting what their background is before we release them? Of course we’re not,” Mark Morgan, former acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), told journalists during a Feb. 9 press conference.

“So not only do we have more than 1.2 million known ‘gotaways,’ and by the way, if you ask border patrol agents, they will tell you we really have no idea how many there really are and it could easily be double that. But we are also knowingly releasing people into the U.S., knowing that we have not done a full-vetted background on [them], in violation of the law.”

Data compiled by the CBP shows that U.S. officials on the border with Mexico encountered 1,915 Chinese during the first three months of the 2023 fiscal year—October 2022 through December 2022. That compares with 4,394 during all of the three prior years. If the rate of such encounters continues throughout 2023, it will total 5,745 encounters, a one-year 31 percent increase over the previous three-year total.

The same data show 17,298 encounters with Russian individuals during the first three months of the fiscal year, and 26,333 for the three prior years. Russia and China have grown increasingly close in recent years, cooperating in joint military maneuvers, in opposing the United States, and on economic matters.

In addition to thousands of Chinese and Russians coming into the country through Mexico without background checks, at least 140 individuals on the FBI’s Terrorist Watchlist have been detained by U.S. immigration officials since Biden took office, more than were detained during the four years under his predecessor in the Oval Office, Donald Trump, according to Tom Homan, former acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

In addition to “individuals from countries that are major U.S. adversaries,” Morgan separately told The Epoch Times that “what should terrify everyone is Border Patrol has encountered individuals from more than 170 countries during this crisis, and they are simply unable to fully and properly vet them all before being released into the U.S.”

“And think about the 1.2 million gotaways since Biden took office—how many potential national security and public safety threats from countries across the globe have been among them? We simply do not know. The cartels certainly don’t care who they’re smuggling across, as long as they make money doing it,” he added.

Morgan and Homan are visiting fellows for the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank’s Border Security and Immigration Center. They were joined during the press conference by Lora Ries, director of the center, who’s a former acting deputy chief of staff for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

All three of the former security and immigration officials were highly critical of Mayorkas. Ries said the DHS chief should be impeached “and disqualified from any further federal office.”

Morgan’s comment came on the same day that the House of Representatives unanimously adopted a resolution condemning Beijing’s violation of U.S. airspace with a spy balloon that crossed over Alaska on Jan. 28, traversed Canada, and then drifted along a path from Montana to South Carolina dotted with strategic U.S. military facilities, including missile silos containing intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as B-52, B-1, and B-2 strategic bomber bases.

While Biden claimed to have ordered the balloon shot down on Feb. 1, Pentagon officials held off until the spy craft headed over the Atlantic Ocean, where it was brought down with a Sidewinder missile fired by a U.S. F-22 Raptor. Chinese officials claimed that the balloon was gathering weather information and drifted into U.S. and Canadian airspace by mistake.

As previously reported by The Epoch Times, the spy balloon is the latest illustration of a massive and long-running espionage effort by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) against the U.S. military, government, economy, and technology.

The border security issue is directly related to China’s campaigns against the United States, according to Republicans and foreign policy experts, because Beijing provides the precursor chemicals used by the Mexican drug cartels to make fentanyl, with which they’re flooding the United States and making untold billions of dollars in the process.

The Heritage officials were critical of three House Republicans who they claim are holding up consideration of H.R. 29, the Border Safety and Security Act introduced by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas). The proposal would require DHS to bar entry into the United States of noncitizens who lack valid entry documents whenever officials are unable to detain them or return them to their home country. The bill also authorizes U.S. border officials to bar entry of non-U.S. nationals without required entry documents if they determine that doing so is necessary to regain control of the U.S. border with Mexico.

The three House Republicans are Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska, Tony Gonzalez of Texas, and Maria Salazar of Florida. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) agreed to their insistence that H.R. 29 be considered under regular order rather than the much quicker process of bringing a legislative proposal to the floor under a suspension of rules.

Morgan told reporters that the central provision of H.R. 29 essentially ends the “Catch-and-Release” policy currently in effect under Biden and that all House Republicans, including Bacon, Gonzalez, and Salazar, supported under their “Commitment to America” pledge during the 2022 midterm election campaign.

Morgan said House Republicans had two years prior to the 118th Congress to debate and settle on the provisions of H.R. 29.

“So, committee hearings? What do you need, a day and a half ... so what’s there to discuss on this bill?”

Bacon told The Epoch Times separately through a spokesman that his “primary goal is to have this bill go through committee and regular order, so that all members of the Homeland Security and Judiciary committees can review and improve it as needed.”

“Some critics have said the bill could totally shut down asylum requests,” the spokesman said. “I’m not sure that is the case, which is why this bill needs to go through the regular process. This new majority has agreed to regular order, and we shouldn’t deviate from that in the first few weeks of this new Congress.

“The same group of people who want this to bypass regular order are the ones who demanded regular order for all bills during the speaker’s votes in early January. They should follow the rules they demanded. Rules for thee and not for me doesn’t work for the good order of the House.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not return a request for comment by press time.