WALK THE LINE

The emergence of Chinese migrants

In 2023, more than 37,400 Chinese migrants entered the US illegally via its southern border.

This was more than 50 times the number in 2021, according to data from the US Customs and Border Protection.

The Chinese were the fastest-growing migrant group encountered by the US Border Patrol.

Three years of pandemic lockdowns had ruined the lives of many in the world’s second-largest economy. People lost their businesses, their savings, their homes and ended up in debt.

The future looked bleak for others even after the end of China’s zero-COVID policy. Economic recovery has faltered, and the slowdown in growth has sapped consumer confidence.

Against this backdrop, videos of Chinese people crossing a dense tropical jungle along with a vast number of South Americans, started appearing on short video apps such as Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, and platforms like YouTube.

To find hope again in the US, they were attempting one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes.

This was how Dad hatched his plan. “I did a lot of research on YouTube and Telegram,” he said. And he figured the family’s tight budget of 200,000 yuan (US$27,500) was just enough to get his family to the Promised Land.

Like many before him, he soon realised that simply getting out of China would be one of the hardest parts of the plan. The rising number of people heading for the US illegally had raised suspicion among Chinese immigration officers.

So the tips shared in Telegram group chats, for example, came in handy.

Necocli: A town rebuilt on the smuggling of migrants

Once a tourist spot, the beach town of Necocli has become a migrant base camp since the pandemic. This is the place to make preparations to cross the dangerous Darien Gap, the jungle separating Colombia from Panama.

The town’s economy has been rebuilt on the smuggling of migrants across the jungle. Essentials such as camping equipment, hiking boots, food rations and even sulphur powder to ward off snakes are readily found there.

Choices must be made: Do they buy — and therefore carry — a portable stove for their trek if they want to eat food such as instant noodles? Should they buy or make food that will keep, like beef jerky?

These migrants must decide what belongings to get rid of to make space for their tents and tarpaulin. They also need to choose their smuggling route from three main packages.

For migrants who make it to the jungle, there are no roads, just challenging terrain over mountains and rivers. Crossing it requires walking on foot for up to a week.

Those who fail to keep pace with the jungle guides could be left behind to follow the rubbish-strewn routes on their own. The routes are not fixed, however, owing to changes wrought by the weather.

Many of the Chinese, exhausted, pay porters to carry their bags and even their children until they set up camp at the end of each day.

But nightfall may not necessarily bring relief. Falling branches can cause injuries, or worse, a flash flood could descend on them.

Migrants are liable to sprain or even break their ankles while climbing the muddy terrain or walking on slippery rocks at river crossings. And there’s the wildlife. The Darien Gap is home to 7 of the 10 world’s most venomous snakes.

It is not uncommon for migrants to come across a dead body or two.

What can hardly be found in the jungle, however, is any police or governmental presence. Colombia’s largest drug cartel and neo-paramilitary group, the Gulf Clan, controls the area, and women and young migrants are especially vulnerable to rape and mistreatment.

The way out of the jungle is largely by river. Depending on their route, migrants will pass through either Bajo Chiquito or Canaan Membrillo, key villages in the Darien Gap that house indigenous communities.

The illegal arrivals have not gone unnoticed by Panamanian authorities. In these villages, the migrants must queue for hours to be received and registered by the National Migration Service.

Illegal immigrants a boon for locals

The unstoppable flow of migrants from numerous countries has touched off a boom in the local economy of these villages, and stalls have emerged to cater for them.

Although the villagers’ native language is Spanish, in Puerto Limon there are signs in Chinese announcing, for example, the availability of currency exchange utilising WeChat Pay and Alipay.

There are shops stocked with products found in China, from instant noodles to herbal drinks to spice mixes. There is even a shop run by a Chinese migrant. An ecosystem around the migrant trade is born.

Migrants arriving in Puerto Limon will not have to wait long for the trucks belonging to Panama’s national border service, Senafront, to trundle in and take them away to government-run migration reception centres.

The government controls the flow of migrants so that they are not out on the streets. Impoverished migrants may have to stay for weeks and put up with overcrowded, filthy conditions as well as limited food supplies and health services.

The United Nations even reported in December 2022 that some officials had solicited sexual favours from migrants in exchange for a seat on the government buses heading out of Panama.

Chinese migrants, meanwhile, usually only stay for a night and are then transported by bus to Costa Rica, as they can afford to pay the fare, which is at least US$40 per person.

Once in Mexico, the migrants become easy prey for human predators.

In the border town of Ciudad Hidalgo, where an international bridge is the only legal means of entry, gangs control the south side, and robbery is common.

Lucy’s family and other Chinese migrants realised this when they were led into an ambush across the river, strip-searched and robbed.

They were left to find a driver who would take them to Tapachula, a city near Mexico’s southern border.

Hefty sum for a safe route

Some Chinese migrants, who have either heard enough horror stories or experienced some of their own, elect instead to pay a smuggler to take them all the way to the US border. The cost? Anywhere between US$5,500 and US$9,000.

Mexican smugglers regularly move groups of four to eight migrants across the country. One smuggler CNA spoke to said he had moved a group of 17 Chinese migrants before.

The smugglers pay off officers at the land checkpoints so that the migrants may pass. They also promise no attacks or kidnapping. But women remain vulnerable in the hands of these smuggling gangs.

The alternative, according to the smugglers, is worse.

Road to Arriaga

It is a four-hour ride by public bus, and if the bus is stopped, migrants on board can expect to pay the police or immigration officers a bribe of 200 pesos (US$10) each time.

Migrants may resort to hiding their money in toilet paper rolls or hiding themselves in the toilet on the bus. But the risk of getting sent back to Tapachula or across the border remains if they do not pay up.

“Torturous” migrant detention system

This is a journey that will take days, with the migrants travelling a few hundred kilometres at a time. And if they are sent to migration detention centres, the conditions are no less harrowing.

Non-governmental organisations such as the Fray Matias de Cordova Human Rights Centre have documented physical and psychological abuse in the “torturous environment” that is Mexico’s migrant detention system, where migrants could be detained for up to 60 days.

In March 2023, when migrants in one detention centre started a fire as a protest, the guards walked off, allowing the fire to get out of control. The fire killed 40 migrants trapped in their cells.

Some migrants buy a motorcycle for several hundred dollars to ride across Mexico. While this takes less time than a bus, it can be tiring. And some villages may not be safe to pass through, with robbery a distinct possibility.

For other migrants, the greatest risk is right along the border.

Dying right on the border with the US

In the Mexican border town of Tijuana, for example, the US border wall extends into the Pacific Ocean.

It is a short distance, but conditions are treacherous. Migrants have died trying to swim to the US, whether in Tijuana or elsewhere such as the Rio Grande, a river that flows along a good part of the border between the two countries.

If migrants do not pay the Mexican cartels controlling the border crossings and strike out on their own instead, they could run into wild animals or get lost in the American desert, without food or water.

One Chinese couple with a toddler whom CNA had first met in Mexico wandered for about seven hours near the border wall before they used WeChat to call our correspondent Wei Du. She, in turn, had to alert the border police to rescue them.

Even migrants brought by Mexican smugglers to entry points patrolled by the US Border Police on the other side — for example in Jacumba, California — may have to spend up to five days in the desert cold.

With the sheer number of illegal migrants on the US southern border, many of them must camp out before they are taken into custody.

Families are processed first, while the rest may have little to no food while waiting except the supplies that American volunteers provide amid the border crisis their country is facing. These supplies are often not enough.

When it is finally their turn, they are searched, photographed and herded into groups.

There are rules on the clothing they can wear — only a single layer is allowed and no jackets, for example — before they are handcuffed and bussed out.

Awaiting them are detention centres where 30 to 40 people may be squeezed into overcrowded cells at any one time. It’s only after their release are they left to make the most of the brave new world they had risked so much to reach.

While the journey into their new lives is just starting, for these migrants who have got so far, they are done “walking the line”.