Illegal from China arrested at U.S. military base

FPI / April 1, 2024

Chinese national who entered the U.S. illegally was arrested after sneaking onto a Marine Corps base in California and refusing to leave, U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed.

Border Patrol agents confirmed to a local news outlet that the Chinese national was arrested Wednesday after entering onto the Marine Corps base in Twentynine Palms.

"His purpose & intent behind his actions are still being investigated," Border Patrol Chief Patrol Agent Gregory K. Bovino posted on X.

According to the Daily Mail, there have been over 100 instances of Chinese nationals infiltrating military bases in the U.S. over the past few years.

Chinese nationals posing as 'tourists" wandered onto a missile launch site in New Mexico, according to a Wall Street Journal report last year.

Others staged as scuba divers in order to get close to a Florida rocket launch site, and another group claimed to be staying on an Army base in Alaska.

The Journal described a "recent case" in which a group of Chinese citizens claimed that they were staying at a Holiday Inn which is located in Fort Wainright, Alaska.

Security at the base became immediately suspicious as tourism in the area is extremely unusual. The base plays host to the U.S. Army's 11th Airborne Division.

Emily Harding, a former official with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told the Wall Street Journal that the Chinese spy operation is more of a numbers game.

"The advantage the Chinese have is they are willing to throw people at collection in large numbers. If a few of them get caught, it will be very difficult for the U.S. government to prove anything beyond trespassing, and those who don't get caught are likely to collect something useful," Harding said.

In 2019, three Chinese nationals were sentenced to prison for illegally taking photographs at a Florida Navy base.

Lyuyou Liao, 27, was sentenced to 12 months in prison, after pleading guilty to illegally entering NAS Key West and taking photographs and video footage of property on the Truman Annex of the station.

Two others, Jielun Zhang, 25, and Yuhao Wang, 24, were sentenced to 12 months and nine months in prison, respectively, for entering the base in January 2019, and taking photographs of military and naval infrastructure.

The same year, a Chinese woman was sentenced to eight months in prison after she entered then-President Donald Trump's estate Mar-a-Lago along while carrying electronic devices and two passports.

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