The US Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday said that it sent 116 Chinese migrants from the US back home in the first “large charter flight” in five years.
The flight, which happened over the weekend, comes as Chinese immigration has become the subject of intense political debate in the upcoming US presidential election.
“We will continue to enforce our immigration laws and remove individuals without a legal basis to remain in the United States,” US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.
Photo: AP
The department said it was working with China to “reduce and deter irregular migration and to disrupt illicit human smuggling through expanded law enforcement efforts.”
It did not respond to questions about how long the migrants had been in the US.
Over the past few years, the US has had a difficult time returning Chinese nationals who do not have the right to stay in the US, because China has resisted taking them back.
Last year, the US saw a drastic surge in the number of Chinese immigrants entering the country illegally from Mexico.
US border officials arrested more than 37,000 Chinese nationals on the southern border last year, 10 times the number during the previous year.
Chinese migration has increasingly become a rallying cry for Republicans and former US president Donald Trump, who have raised suspicions about why Chinese migrants are going to the US.
Asian advocacy organizations are concerned that the rhetoric could encourage harassment of Asians, while migrants themselves have said they are coming to escape poverty and repression.
Earlier this year, the US and China resumed cooperation on migration issues.
The Chinese government has said it is firmly opposed to “all forms of illegal immigration.”
In a statement in May, the Chinese embassy in the US said the country’s law enforcement was cracking down “hard on crimes that harm the tranquility of national border, and maintained a high pressure against all kinds of smuggling organizations and offenders.”
The US Department of Homeland Security said it is working with China on more removal flights in the future, but did not give a time line for when the next one would happen.
Earlier this year, a charter flight carried a small but unknown number of deportees to the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, said Thomas Cartwright of Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks deportation flights.
US officials did not say how many people were on that March 30 flight, but the Gulfstream V aircraft typically has a seating capacity of 14.
It also made a stop in South Korea before heading back to the US, Cartwright said.
The announcement of the large charter flight comes after Ecuador cut off a key route used by Chinese migrants to get to the Western Hemisphere. Ecuador was one of only two mainland countries in the Americas to offer visa-free entry to Chinese nationals and had become a popular starting point for Chinese migrants to then trek north to the US.
As of Monday, Ecuador has effectively reinstated visas for Chinese nationals after the South American country said it had seen a worrying increase in irregular migration.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS