Homeland Security sends flight full of deportees to China; ‘smuggling’ operators returned

The Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday that it sent a charter flight of deportees back to China for the first time in six years.

The department was cagey about details, saying only that it was a “large charter flight” over the weekend. The department didn’t say exactly how many people were on it, where it flew from and to, and whether future flights are in the works, nor did officials say how they selected the deportees.

But Chinese authorities told The Washington Times the deportees included “planners and organizers of smuggling activities.”

Homeland Security characterized the flight as part of its recent get-tough efforts at the border.

“We will continue to enforce our immigration laws and remove individuals without a legal basis to remain in the United States,” Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement announcing the move. “People should not believe the lies of smugglers.”

The flight comes as the U.S. is facing a massive increase in Chinese immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, including an influx of young men of military age. That has sparked shots from congressional Republicans saying Chinese government operatives could be sneaking in with the masses.

China has long been a challenge for American deportation officials, and it appears on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s list of “recalcitrant” nations that limit cooperation to small numbers of deportees.

That makes this weekend’s charter flight historic — and underscores just how much more work remains, with hundreds of thousands of Chinese migrants who are in the U.S. illegally.

That includes criminals, said Jon Feere, a former chief of staff at ICE.

“We’ve had serious problems with China not taking back their people for years. We have tens of thousands of fully removable criminal aliens that could be deported to China immediately if the country was cooperative,” said Mr. Feere, who now works at the Center for Immigration Studies.

The numbers are only growing.

This fiscal year, nearly 56,000 unauthorized Chinese migrants have entered the U.S., according to Customs and Border Protection. That already tops last year’s record of 52,700.

By comparison, ICE said it managed to deport just 288 unauthorized Chinese migrants last year.

That works out to a deportation rate of just 1 per every 183 new arrivals.

Chinese embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu acknowledged the deportation flight, saying it “repatriated the planners and organizers of smuggling activities and illegal immigrants to their original places of residence, and pursued their legal responsibility in accordance with the law.”

“The Chinese government unswervingly adheres to the policy of opening up, promotes normal cross-border travels in accordance with the law, safeguards the legitimate rights and interests of people entering and exiting the country, resolutely opposes smuggling, cracks down on illegal and criminal activities organized by smuggling people in accordance with the law, and actively participates in global governance of illegal immigration,” he said.

“The National Immigration Administration will continue to carry out pragmatic law enforcement cooperation with relevant national authorities on the basis of equality and mutual respect, jointly maintain orderly flow of people between countries, and enhance international personnel exchanges.”

Deportation politics can be thorny between the two nations.

In 2020, the State Department slapped visa sanctions on some Chinese officials and their families as retaliation for Beijing’s lack of cooperation with Homeland Security.

China, for its part, announced in 2022 that it was stopping all cooperation on deportations after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan.

Jonathan Fahey, who ran ICE at the end of the Trump administration, said it will take more than one flight for the Biden administration to prove itself.

“Whatever they’re doing is just really for show now because they want to look like they’re doing something before another election,” said Mr. Fahey, now a partner at the District of Columbia law firm Holtzman Vogel. “Everything with this administration has been purely politically driven cynicism.”

He said the challenge of going after the tens of thousands of Chinese already in the U.S. is massive.

“I can’t even imagine how many flights they would need and how many hoops they would have to jump through for each individual,” he said.

While the Biden administration tied the deportations to what it calls a tougher approach at the border, which began last month, the flight had been in the works for months.

Acting ICE Director Patrick Lechleitner told a House subcommittee in the spring that it was “moving in the right direction” with China.

“We’ve had some recent cautiously optimistic progress with the Chinese,” Mr. Lechleitner said.

ICE used to post its list of countries facing visa sanctions on its website but deleted that information during the Biden administration.

The agency also used to reveal its list of recalcitrant countries but hasn’t done so for years.

The most recent public list is from a Congressional Research Service report in July 2020. At the time, 13 were listed as recalcitrant nations and 17 were deemed “at risk of noncompliance.”

Some others on that 2020 list were Cuba, India, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Russia.

Iraq had agreed to start cooperating in 2017 after it was listed as a target in President Trump’s first travel ban. But after some initial promises of cooperation, Iraqi leaders backslid.