Ecuador's government on Tuesday suspended a policy allowing visa-free entry for Chinese citizens in an apparent move to crack down on asylum seekers flying to the South American nation en route to the United States.
In the last year, Ecuador has become a key transit point for tens of thousands of Chinese citizens seeking to travel to the US-Mexico border. Many eventually cross into California.
From Ecuador, many Chinese immigrants head to Tijuana and other points in Baja California (a land journey of more than 3,000 miles, through jungles, deserts and cities) and enter neighboring San Diego County. Most turn themselves in to the US Border Patrol and request asylum.
Migrants receive food from local volunteers at a makeshift camp near the border wall in Jacumba Hot Springs, California.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Ecuador's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a publication on X cited a “worrying increase in migratory flows from China.” Chinese citizens were “using Ecuador as a starting point to reach other destinations in the hemisphere,” he said.
The Biden administration, seeking to counter Republican claims that the border is out of control, has been pressuring Mexico and other transit nations to crack down on asylum seekers from around the world who have been traveling through South America. South and Central and Mexico en route to the border. United States border.
The number of undocumented Chinese immigrants entering San Diego County illegally from Mexico has increased dramatically in recent years, and the area is now the main crossing point for nearly all Chinese national asylum seekers, according to U.S. government statistics. Joined.
Chinese national Zhang Hao uses his phone to book a taxi in the parking lot of the Iris Avenue bus station in San Diego, where the US Border Patrol dropped him and dozens of other asylum seekers.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
In the current fiscal year, from October 1, 2023 to April 2024, the US Border Patrol in San Diego recorded 27,135 apprehensions of Chinese nationals. That's more than double the 10,520 detentions of Chinese nationals in all of the previous fiscal year, and nearly 30 times the 947 detentions of Chinese immigrants detained in all of fiscal 2022.
Most Chinese asylum seekers detained at the southwest border are released pending future hearing dates in U.S. immigration courts, officials say.
The Ecuadorian government statement called the suspension of visa exemptions for Chinese citizens “temporary,” but did not give a date for reinstating the policy.
