“We’re not military spies. Do you see anyone buying heavy weaponry or weapons here?” Yang said. “The fact that Trump says this is completely crazy.”
Trump’s transition team did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
If indeed focused on immigrants of Chinese descent, Trump’s deportation policies are likely to be challenged legally as a blatant example of racial profiling. But experts note that, after having attempted versions of these policies in his first term, and emboldened by growing support among the public, Trump could be more successful implementing them this time around.
“I expect that we will see ICE raids that are carried out for the purpose of terrorizing immigrant communities and where the purpose is inflicting cruelty on immigrants,” Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, told NBC News.
While Asian immigrants have long been the fastest-growing undocumented population, the number of Chinese nationals crossing into the United States in particular has skyrocketed in recent years. Between fiscal years 2022 and 2024, the number of undocumented Chinese nationals crossing both the northern and southern borders has tripled, from just over 27,000 to more than 78,000.
Experts and undocumented immigrants have said that China’s economic downturn and political friction, which came to a head during the country’s prolonged Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions, were largely the basis of the migration wave. But Trump has repeatedly suggested that “military-age” men are conspiring to build an army.
“They’re coming in from China — 31, 32,000 over the last few months — and they’re all military age and they mostly are men,” Trump said in April during a campaign rally. “And it sounds like to me, are they trying to build a little army in our country? Is that what they’re trying to do?”
And on a Dr. Phil podcast episode released in early December, Trump’s incoming “border czar” doubled down on such comments.
“Sixty thousand Chinese males, mostly military age, do not leave China without the coordination and approval of the Chinese government,” said Tom Homan, who was the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump’s first term in office. “This is a coordinated national security vulnerability that the Chinese government is involved in.”
