Fox News was with Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) troopers when they discovered three Chinese nationals and a Colombian woman crossing the border into Mission, TX.
Bill Melugin caught the incident on video.
The four people came to America on a raft across the Rio Grande. The Chinese nationals paid a smuggler $35,000 each to help them cross the border.
Texas DPS Trooper Chris Olivarez said: “This is an example of how much money is involved with human smuggling and how it strengthens transnational criminal organizations who exploit the vulnerabilities from illegal immigrants and expose the open border policies imposed by the federal government.”
It’s rare for Chinese nationals to cross the border illegally “between the ports of entry.” Olivarez also said the smugglers usually charge those people more than $35,000.
Melugin tweeted a Washington Times article from December 2022 about border patrol agents finding Fengjie Cao and another Chinese woman in the trunk of a Volkswagon crossing the border into California. Cao “was going to pay $80,000 USD to be smuggled into the United States.” The other woman did not tell the agents how much she would have paid.
But a simple Google search gives us other instances of Chinese nationals at the border. In November 2019, the Border Patrol said agents had seen a “significant” increase of Chinese nationals trying to cross into the U.S. illegally. From ValleyCentral.com:
“As of late, Border Patrol agents are encountering Chinese nationals on a regular basis,” said Agent Dustin Araujo, Special Operations Supervisor for U.S. Border Patrol.The highest number of Chinese immigrants apprehended recorded for the Rio Grande Valley is in Fiscal Year 2019.“In Fiscal Year 2018, the Rio Grande Valley sector apprehended just over 700 Chinese nationals and in Fiscal Year 2019, that just ended in October, the RGV sector apprehended over 1,300 Chinese nationals,” said Araujo.That’s more than an 85% increase in one year, of Chinese immigrants caught by Border Patrol for the RGV.
Araujo mentioned that Chinese nationals have more worth for smugglers than people from Central and South America.
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