The United States may block Chinese visitors if China’s government keeps blocking the deportation of roughly 30,000 Chinese illegal migrants who have been ordered for deportation by federal courts, says Reuters.
The warning comes shortly before President Donald Trump’s trip to China on May 14-15.
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Reuters reported:
After accepting about 3,000 deportees via charter and commercial flights in early 2025, China has scaled back cooperation in the past six months, the senior U.S. official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly about administration plans.
China “refuses to fully cooperate with the United States to take back its citizens,” the official said, calling it a violation of China’s international obligations and responsibility toward its people.
…
There are now more than 100,000 undocumented Chinese nationals in the U.S., the official said. More than 30,000 have final orders of removal [from judges], and of those, authorities have detained more than 1,500 awaiting deportation. Most in this last category have committed other crimes, the official said.
The U.S. cannot fly migrants back to their home countries without the countries’ permission. Many countries hinder their migrants’ return, including India, Laos, and Vietnam, partly because illegal migrants send billions of dollars back to their homelands.
Many of the Chinese illegal migrants were welcomed by President Joe Biden’s pro-migration border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas.
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Biden’s team also refused to pressure China to take back even criminal migrants who had completed their jail sentences. The inaction was likely driven by the close alliance of Biden’s political team with donors on Wall Street, who opposed any threats to lucrative trade with China.
But Trump has established a pro-American policy against illegal migration, which Reuters described as “hard-line immigration policies.”
It is not clear how hard the Trump team will press China to cooperate with ICE’s effort to deport China’s army of illegal migrants and of the many Chinese migrants who have overstayed their student, tourist, or work visas. Reuters reported:
The official said that if China didn’t increase cooperation on deportations, the United States would consider increased cash bonds accompanying visa applications, as well as denying more visas and blocking more entries at the border.
Many of Mayorkas’ Chinese migrants joined criminal gangs, often to establish a Chinese-style underground banking system to aid the Mexican cartels’ drug smuggling. The criminal partnership between Mayorkas’ Chinese migrants and the cartels has helped to kill tens of thousands of young Americans.
Many Chinese illegals find off-the-books jobs at businesses in Chinese enclaves in California, New York, and Texas, where they can easily hide and work among legalized migrants from China. In Ohio, for example, legal investors from China run a large glass factory that has been formally accused by Trump’s deputies of importing many illegal workers from China.
“Approximately 239,000 [Chinese illegal migrants] were unauthorized as of mid-2022,” according to a 2025 report by a pro-migration group, the Migration Policy Institute.
Many other Chinese migrants arrive legally, often via H-1B white-collar visa programs that are being used to sideline American college graduates.
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