'Fox & Friends' panel discusses surge of Chinese migrants crossing Southern US border aided by TikTok
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: Co-host Lawrence Jones was joined by author Helen Raleigh and field reporter Julio Rosas to discuss the surge of Chinese migrants illegally coming across the southern US border on the February 6 episode of 'Fox & Friends.'
The topic was brought up on the morning show after '60 Minutes' on CBS aired a report on the subject. They met with the Chinese immigrants coming through the border wall after being dropped off at an open border gap east of San Diego by smugglers.
It was discovered that the immigrants were able to get into the country by following explicit directions posted on TikTok.
According to Fox News, there has been a significant rise in the number of Chinese nationals apprehended at the southwest border in recent years. While it was 450 in the fiscal year 2021, in 2022 and 2023 the numbers went up to 2,176 and 24,314 respectively,
What drove Chinese nationals to get into the USA?
Raleigh felt that wanting to get away from China played a significant role in driving the migrants to the United States, whose border security was broken.
"They were really driven by, first of all, the open invitation of our lawless border. Everybody else is doing it, facing no consequences, so they are following those examples. And secondly, but most importantly, they were driven by China's, political, ongoing political persecution and a deteriorating economic situation," she told Jones.
"Nobody feels safe in China, and… on the economic front, there's a high youth unemployment rate. The stock markets are deteriorating," she continued.
"People saw the biggest drop in their salaries last year, as well as the property market, slumping and the property market especially hurting people's confidence because over 70% of the Chinese people have their personal wealth tied to properties. So all these factors combined are driving people to come here."
Julio Rosas fears for the security of the USA
"This really hasn't happened before, at least in these large numbers," Rosas said of the inflow of migrants.
"We're not even talking about people from Asia. But we just had that recent report where an al-Shabab terrorist didn't even avoid Border Patrol. He turned himself in, he was processed and released, and was in the country for over a year before the US government realized their mistake," he shared.
"It's what we've been seeing for the past few years now, and the fact that there's no fear, the fact that we have Border Patrol essentially trying to hide from illegal immigrants and illegal immigrants are the ones trying to find Border Patrol, that just shows how crazy things have become under this administration."
Voicing his concern, the reporter stated, "It's not even central or even South Americans anymore. It's people from all over the world and people coming from, let's face it, adversarial countries who may want to do us harm and may want to exploit us through this weak point."
