AUSTIN, Texas — In the Trump administration’s final three years, a dedicated FBI effort, the China Initiative, nabbed dozens of Chinese Communist Party spies who, posing as scholars, relieved top American research institutions and their naïve professors of sensitive and prized national-defense research.
Those spies had flown into American airports — hiding their military service and Chinese diplomatic relationships — quite legally on cultural-exchange and student-visa programs.
But in a series of stunning make-up presents to China for Donald Trump’s crackdown, his successor President Biden in July 2021 summarily killed a ready-to-go Trump regulation that would have required much more rigorous and frequent vetting of Chinese student and cultural-exchange visa applicants.
That same month, the Department of Justice dropped strong charges against five visiting researcher spies as a diplomatic sop amidst the new administration’s outreach.
Team Biden ended the China Initiative itself in 2022 on grounds the spy-hunting program — especially its name — contributed to bias against US-based Chinese immigrants.
If the Chinese spy services weren’t utterly thrilled with these generous offerings, the Biden government has now outdone itself.
His Department of Homeland Security has let in at least 44,000 Chinese nationals who illegally crossed the southwest border from the time he took office through January 2024, most of them flying first into Ecuador on cheap tourist visas available for a few bucks online.
More Chinese nationals are crossing the San Diego border than Mexican nationals.
While there’s no evidence to support theories China is sending troops in civilian clothing to await Beijing’s attack orders, it’s virtually certain some of these young men and women are at least spies.
. . .