Must-watch: Chinese migrants are entering US illegally. We follow their perilous odyssey

NECOCLI, Colombia and SAN DIEGO: When Lucy was living in the city of Chengdu, she was studying at a church school. In China, that is illegal, so the school operated underground.

But the church got banned, and the school was shut down. For a couple of months, classes were taught in her home. That, too, was discovered, and the authorities put a stop to it.

“Our landlord in Chengdu later came to us and said he couldn’t renew our lease,” recounted Dad. After that, he and his wife came to a decision. “We wanted to take our daughter out of China,” said Mum.

Dad did the research, trawling through YouTube and Telegram. And in December, they and their 13-year-old daughter were in South America, following in the footsteps of thousands of Chinese citizens who have tried entering the United States illegally.

Last year, over 37,400 Chinese migrants entered the US illegally via its southern border, more than 50 times the number in 2021, according to data from the US Customs and Border Protection.

While Central and South Americans formed the bulk of the 2.54 million migrants who entered illegally via the southern border last year, the Chinese are the fastest-growing migrant group encountered by the US Border Patrol.

There is a newly coined expression on the Chinese internet referring to what they are doing: Walking the line.

It is a line that starts as far south as Ecuador — the closest country to the US that allows Chinese passport holders to enter visa-free — which means taking a long, arduous detour to reach the US.

It means trekking through dense jungle in drug-cartel territory as well as enduring robberies and police extortion along the way.

Their journey along one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes is observed in the coming CNA series, Walk The Line, which followed some of the Chinese migrants for seven weeks.

They were willing to be filmed on condition that their real names were not used. They were, for the most part, unprepared for the travails ahead.

‘NOT OUR NORMAL CUSTOMER’

The US has had almost 1,250 kilometres of primary and secondary barriers along its 3,140-km border with Mexico since 2021. It is not enough to keep illegal migrants from coming in.

Coming soon: Following Chinese migrants’ journey to US border (3:13)

One of the openings in the border wall is near 75-year-old Jerry Shuster’s land in Jacumba, California. And migrants including the Chinese are camping out on his property while waiting for the US Border Patrol to process them.

“Can I take them out of there? I took my gun, and I shot in the air four bullets. The police arrested me. … Even Border Patrol tells me, ‘Leave them alone, you can’t move them out of there,’” he said.

“I think Chinese have more rights than we do over here. … But I don’t understand why they come over here. I really would like to know that myself.”

One of those migrants camping out put it succinctly to CNA correspondent Wei Du: “We couldn’t make ends meet in China. Who’d come here otherwise?”

Another Chinese migrant, who had to sell his apartment and car and ran up “huge debts”, complained: “The government can make you do PCR tests or shut down your business whenever it wants to.”

With the surge in illegal border crossings from Mexico in recent months, the US Border Patrol has prioritised the processing of families while other migrants can wait for days before being taken into custody.

CNA was there late last November as one group of Chinese migrants were getting ready for night in the Californian desert not too far from San Diego. “It’s only 6 pm,” muttered one of them. “The cold is unbearable.”

There are volunteers feeding migrants awaiting Border Patrol processing, and team leader Sam Schultz, a local resident, estimated that on most days, “upwards of 50 per cent” of the migrants were Chinese.

He had been helping to provide food and water supplies for about 10 weeks by then. And one thing he noticed was how hard it was “to get a bunch of Chinese people to line up in a queue”.

“I think people are really worried that there might not be enough food for everybody, so they just want to be in the front,” he said. “And they’re right. There might not be enough food for everyone, sad to say.”

It is “not a particularly orderly situation” on the border, and most of the Chinese migrants, he observed, “aren’t really familiar with camping out, … dealing with the kind of harsh situation that we have here”.

Or as one Border Patrol officer told Du, expressing his surprise to see more Chinese migrants of late: “Not our normal customer.”

BIG DREAMS, BIG RISKS

Viewers of Walk The Line will have a ringside seat for the border crisis unfolding in the US. They will also have an up-close look at the personal crises of Chinese migrants as they struggle to reach the country.

Lucy’s family met Du in Colombia, before they were to make their way to the Darien Gap, a jungle separating the country from Panama. Until today, the Darien Gap has no roads; crossing it can take up to a week.

A worried Mum said: “My daughter isn’t an athletic child. She gets headaches if she walks too much. I don’t know if she can handle it.”

Smugglers take groups of migrants through the jungle to reach Panama. But the trek itself is not as great a peril as the drug cartel controlling the area.

Asked if there was no turning back, a teary Dad replied: “No. I want to be free — free from fear — (and to) say and do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t hurt others. I want to experience that.”

WATCH: Why we left China with our 13-year-old, and risked our lives to get to the US illegally (19:56)

His wife may not have “big dreams as he does”, but she does want Lucy to have “an easier life”. She said: “My life’s been too tiring.”

But as they inched towards the Promised Land for many immigrant families, she acknowledged that their initial ideas of the US may not square with reality.

“We were naive. We thought the streets in America were paved with gold,” she said. “All we had to do was to pick it up.”

Watch all three episodes of Walk The Line here: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.