The Department of Homeland Security announced that it had deported 116 Chinese immigrants on the first “large-scale charter flight” in five years.
“We will continue to enforce our immigration laws and remove individuals who have no lawful basis to be in the United States,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.
The weekend flight came amid fierce political debate over Chinese immigration ahead of the US presidential election.
The department said it was working with China to “reduce and prevent illegal immigration and combat illegal human trafficking through expanded law enforcement activities,” and did not respond to questions about how long the migrants had been in the United States.
The ministry said it was working with China to send more evacuation flights in the future, but did not provide a timeline for when the next flights would take place.
In recent years, the United States has struggled to deport Chinese nationals who have no right to be in the U.S. because China has resisted accepting them. Last year, the U.S. saw a sharp increase in the number of Chinese migrants entering the country illegally from Mexico.
U.S. border authorities apprehended more than 37,000 Chinese nationals at the southern border in 2023, 10 times the number from the previous year.
Immigration from China has increasingly become a watchword for Republicans and former President Donald Trump, who have questioned why immigrants from China are coming to the United States.
Asian advocacy groups worry such rhetoric could incite harassment of Asians, but the immigrants themselves say they are fleeing poverty and oppression.
Earlier this year, the United States and China resumed cooperation on immigration, with the Chinese government saying it firmly opposes “all forms of illegal immigration.” In a statement in May, the U.S. Embassy in China said Chinese law enforcement agencies “continue to crack down on crimes that undermine border peace and apply strong pressure on smuggling organizations and criminals of all kinds.”
Earlier this year, charter flights carried a small but unknown number of deportees to the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, according to Thomas Cartwright of Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks deportation flights.
Homeland Security officials did not say how many passengers were on the March 30 flight, but the Gulfstream V-class plane typically seats 14 people. The flight also stopped in South Korea before returning to the U.S., Cartwright said.
The announcement of the large-scale charter flights over the weekend comes amid growing efforts across the country to shut down key routes used by Chinese migrants to reach the Western Hemisphere.
The United States said Monday it would pay to repatriate migrants who enter Panama illegally, under an agreement with the Central American country’s new president, who has vowed to close the dangerous Darien Canyon, a road used by people heading north to the United States.
And the South American country of Ecuador effectively reinstated visas for Chinese nationals as of July 1 after it said it was seeing an alarming increase in illegal immigration.
Ecuador is one of only two countries in the Americas that allows Chinese nationals visa-free entry, making it a popular jumping-off point for Chinese migrants heading north to the United States.
