New US Threat Toward China Over Immigration
The new US threat toward China comes just days before President Trump’s planned May 14-15 visit to Beijing. A senior Trump administration official told Reuters that Washington is prepared to increase travel restrictions on China if Beijing doesn’t reverse its stance on repatriating Chinese nationals who are in the US illegally.
China has resisted US requests to take back tens of thousands of its citizens who have overstayed or entered the country illegally. When Trump took office, China had suggested it was willing to repatriate “confirmed Chinese nationals” following verification. But Beijing has said doing so takes time.
After accepting about 3,000 deportees via charter and commercial flights in early 2025, China has scaled back cooperation in the past six months, according to a senior US official speaking on condition of anonymity. The official called it a violation of China’s international obligations and responsibility toward its people.
If China doesn’t increase cooperation on deportations, the United States would consider increased cash bonds accompanying visa applications, as well as denying more visas and blocking more entries at the border. Inaction by the Chinese government will jeopardize future travel for law-abiding Chinese citizens, the official said.
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Previously Beijing has said it opposes illegal migration and calls it an “international issue that requires cooperation between countries.”
TENS OF THOUSANDS AWAIT REMOVAL
Trump’s hard-line immigration policy includes aggressive deportation drives, revocations of visas and green cards, and checks of social media posts and past speeches of immigrants. During the Biden administration, the number of Chinese nationals illegally crossing the US southern border surged from negligible numbers to tens of thousands as China’s economy faced headwinds and US visas were harder to acquire due to COVID-era restrictions.
There are now more than 100,000 undocumented Chinese nationals in the US, with over 30,000 having final orders of removal. Of those, authorities have detained more than 1,500 awaiting deportation, most of whom have committed other crimes, according to the official.
Independent estimates of the number of undocumented Chinese nationals in the US vary. The Migration Policy Institute said that in mid-2022 as many as 239,000 Chinese immigrants were not authorized to be in the country. Other countries with large numbers of undocumented people in the US, including India, are fully cooperating with the US.
The US wants Beijing to provide travel documents and approve Customs and Border Protection charter flights with deportees, paid for by the US. Under Section 243(d) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the US can place visa sanctions on countries deemed “recalcitrant” in complying with repatriation requests, a label routinely applied to China by the Department of Homeland Security.
US authorities going back to the Obama administration have said they believe China slow rolls the issuance of new travel documents for the deportees because it doesn’t want to take them back or sees the issue as a useful point of leverage with Washington. US law enforcement officials have told Reuters that China at times seeks to link Washington’s requests on deportations to Beijing’s requests to extradite economic or political fugitives who have fled to the United States.