Chinese migrants are using Mexican IDs to ease their passage to the US amid a huge increase in arrivals from the communist country.
The puzzling trend was revealed in new footage from the San Diego border, where the number of China nationals entering from Mexico so far this year is already more than double its total for the whole of last year.
It is thought the IDs are being made and sold by cartels so that migrants travelling to the US from Asia and elsewhere can pass checks by Mexican police as they travel through the country.
The documents are then destroyed or discarded by migrants as they cross the US border, making it harder for authorities to identify them and easing their path to asylum.
Video shared with DailyMail.com shows Bill Wells, Mayor of El Cajon, a city about 17 miles east of San Diego, inspecting dozens of cards left behind by Chinese nationals at a crossing point between Jacumba Hot Springs and Campo.
Bill Wells, Mayor of El Cajon, a city in San Diego county, inspects dozens of Chinese IDs found near the US-Mexico border. Those in blue are issued in China, but those in yellow are Mexican IDs for Chinese nationals
It is thought the IDs are being made and sold by cartels so that migrants travelling to the US from Asia and elsewhere can pass checks by Mexican police as they travel through the country
More than 24,000 Chinese migrants crossed US borders illegally in fiscal year 2023, compared to around 2,000 in 2022 and just 342 in 2021
Wells appears baffled by the fact that the majority were issued by the Mexican government, with cardholders described as ‘temporary residents’, ‘visitors’ or ‘humanitarian workers’ in the central American country.
He later told DailyMail.com that these were likely being used by Chinese migrants so they could show Mexican authorities they had a reason to be in their country.
The mayor added that he was shocked by the ‘sheer number’ of the discarded documents he saw during his visit to the border on Friday night.
‘My worst fears were validated,’ he said. ‘I talked to the border patrol guys, they’re all ready to quit. They say it’s just insanely out of control.
‘They think people don’t care and have no sense of how big the problem is.
‘The American people really need to wake up to how significant this problem really is.’
Wells also held up a Chinese merchant marine passport that had been cut up and discarded at the border by its owner.
He explained that this was ‘probably because they wanted to claim asylum and if you have a passport and ways to be tracked…you don’t want to be tracked.
‘You want to say you’re here without anything and claim asylum.’
The cards had been collected by local gun store owner Cory Gautereaux after they had been left strewn across his property.
There were a number from south and central America as well as the Middle East, but the majority came from China.
San Diego resident and gun store owner Cory Gautereaux has collected dozens of foreign IDs that have been discarded by migrants at his property near the Mexico border
It is thought migrants leave them behind once they reach the US so they can’t be traced
Mayor Wells holds up a Chinese merchant marine passport that had been cut up and discarded at the border by its owner
Most fly into Tijuana before paying cartels up to $35,000 to get them to the US.
Wells also visited part of the border wall where makeshift ropes had been made out of old cloth to help migrants climb over.
He said border agents had told him that particular section was being targeted because there were no cameras there.
The mayor said that once migrants made it across the border, they would be picked up by a bus that would take them to a processing center.
From there, they would be dispatched to a transit center near San Ysidro, where they would then be released.
Migrant arrests in San Diego reached 8,989 for the week ending April 16, according to figures the agency posted on X. Meanwhile, Tucson — which previously had been the top region for crossings — had 7,500 arrests for the week ending April 19.
Recent data shows the migrant crisis is shifting west to border states like Arizona and California amid a crack down in Texas by Republican Governor Greg Abbott.
Mexican authorities have also tightened security on their side of the Texan border.
The volume of migrants arriving is overwhelming resources in San Diego, with officials reporting that up to 1,000 people a day are being released at city train and bus stops.
Crossings in the sector rose from 31,562 in February to 33,784 in March, although this total was down slightly from the 34,371 migrants who entered San Diego in December.
San Diego has seen more than double the amount of Chinese nationals in the first half of this fiscal year than in all of 2023
Chinese migrants described traveling from China, to Taiwan, to Turkey and then South America before flying into Mexico. The multiple stops are necessary as Chinese citizens cannot fly from their homeland to the US directly. Above, some who entered legally with paperwork provided by the government
A Chinese migrant camp near Jacumba, California has signs showing Chinese asylum seekers where to turn themselves over to US Border Patrol agents
Last month, a dozen migrants zoomed into a beach in Carlsbad, a town about 30 miles north of San Diego.
The boat missed what appeared to be a surfer in the water by a few feet as it zipped by and approached the beach at very high speed.
After beaching the vessel on the sand, the migrants got out and sprinted towards the row of oceanfront houses and were picked up by waiting black SUVs.
The cars left in such haste that one woman almost fell out as it started moving before she had fully clambered into the back seats.
DailyMail.com has previously revealed that a US Border Patrol chief has warned that his agents are being overwhelmed by the number of Chinese migrants crossing the border illegally and that they could be missing Communist spies.
Chief Patrol Agent Anthony Good, of the Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector, told the Homeland Security Committee during a private hearing in September last year that his agents were ‘trying their best to figure out why [individuals from other continents are] coming’ but that ‘information can be hidden’ and ‘their agendas, their ideologies, the reason for them coming could be missed’.