During China’s Covid lockdowns, a woman who had lived in a busy metropolitan area for most of her life and her then-husband quickly grew critical of the country’s “zero-Covid” policy. They spoke out but faced retaliation from authorities, leading her to flee to the U.S. last month.
The woman, who asked not to be identified for fear of further admonishment, didn’t take a typical route. Many migrants from China come to the U.S. through the Darien Gap, a stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama they cross on their way north. Instead, she took a boat from the Bahamas, she said.
She said she traveled last month, flying from China to London to the Bahamas, then boarding a boat to Coral Gables, Florida, in a quest to enter the U.S. and apply for asylum. She recalled encountering rough seas, remote islands — and then Border Patrol.
She was then detained at the end of her journey in Florida, she told NBC News exclusively.
“I knew it’s dangerous, but I had no other choice,” she said in Mandarin from Customs and Border Protection custody at the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, Florida, where she’s being held.
The woman said that after critiquing the government, she was harassed by authorities as a result. She said she felt she had to leave and has retained an attorney in the U.S. to oversee her asylum claim.
“China has no rule of law, no human rights and the people are governed by an emperor,” she said, referring to Chinese leader Xi Jinping. “All our freedoms have been stripped away and there’s nothing left.”
Her journey came to an end on Jan. 17, just days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration and increasing arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in cities across the country. The actions appeared to portend Trump’s promise to enact mass deportations when in office.
The woman from China was among 30 people taken into custody in Coral Gables as part of an investigation into a possible human smuggling or trafficking operation, authorities said. Twenty-one of the individuals were from China.
More than 35,000 Chinese migrants crossed the southern border in 2023, but crossings have dropped significantly since then due to stricter enforcement on both the U.S. and Mexican sides. As a result, alternate smuggling routes — such as this woman’s path through the Bahamas — may be growing more popular.
The migrants were found in a U-Haul van, and the people suspected of being behind the operation were placed in custody, Coral Gables Police Chief Ed Hudak said. Police said they were alerted by a security guard for a nearby homeowners association, who told police he thought an abduction was taking place.
Also in Coral Gables, on Jan. 28 officers intercepted launched an investigation after intercepting several vans transporting more than two dozen Chinese migrants.
Police are trying to determine if both incidents were smuggling or human trafficking operations and whether they might be connected.
“Smuggling is a criminal assistance to somebody who illegally wants to enter the country,” Hudak said at a news conference last month. “The human trafficking side is really not, they may have started off trying to enter the country and they get into a nefarious act where individuals are bringing them here for indentured servitude, criminal activity.”
Routes through the Bahamas have drawn interest over the past few years, though those patterns can be cyclical. In New Providence, the Bahamas’ most populous island, officials apprehended 4,949 foreign nationals in 2022, more than two times that of the year prior. The number cooled to 3,702 apprehensions in 2023, according to an annual report from the country’s Department of Immigration.
For Chinese migrants in particular, the number apprehended in Miami so far for fiscal year 2025, which began in October, has already reached almost three-quarters of what it was in 2024.
Experts say new routes could become more common, with new policies on the southern border potentially prompting migrants to find alternative paths to the United States. Trump’s administration has said it will shut down routes like the Darien Gap, though it’s not within his authority to do so.
The Bahamas is one route that does not require a visa from many countries to enter.
Doris Meissner, the director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute, told NBC News that she wasn’t surprised by migrants going through the Bahamas. She said new administrations or policies can prompt a “wait-and-see” period among smugglers. And she said there are likely other routes being tested across different geographic locations.
“The smugglers wait to see how the policies are actually going to be implemented, whether they stick. And that’s certainly happening right now at the Southwest border,” said Meissner, the former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. “Typically during that kind of a period or following it, there will be efforts to find some other kinds of routes.”
Under the new administration, questions remain over how newly arrived undocumented immigrants will be dealt with. Trump recently signed an executive action suspending asylum for those crossing through the southern border. Last month, the Department of Homeland Security expanded its use of “expedited removal,” a process that allows CBP officials to deport individuals without an immigration court hearing or other appearance before a judge.
A $32,000 journey
The Chinese migrant, who’s awaiting an asylum hearing, said she connected with her smugglers online.
“All the information needed to make the journey can be found there,” she said in Mandarin.
She said the people overseeing the operation are based in the southeast coastal province of Fujian in China. Since the 1980s, smuggling has been a common method of entry for immigrants specifically from Fujian. With the help of technology and through apps like WeChat, modern smugglers might communicate and make handoffs at different points, create fake documents for travelers and find lesser-traveled routes.
Smuggling “is the traditional industry for the Fujianese,” she said. “They manage all the sea routes and know what to do.”
“China’s position on the issue of illegal immigration is consistent and clear,” Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said. “The Chinese government firmly opposes all forms of illegal immigration and will continue to strengthen cooperation on international immigration law enforcement and work with relevant countries to address the challenges posed by illegal cross-border activities such as organized smuggling.”
The woman said that the route her smugglers arranged for her included flying to London and then onto the city of Nassau in the Bahamas before boarding two separate boats bound for Florida.
Her Fujianese smugglers hired local men to arrange shelter and to transport the woman and her group, but the planning and logistics were coordinated by a smuggling operation in China, up to the very last leg from the Bahamas to Miami, she said.
The services don’t come cheap.
The woman said she paid an initial deposit of more than $10,000 with a promise to pay an additional $22,000 when she arrived safely in the U.S. She doesn’t have to pay the remaining sum given her current state in detention, she said.
It was a price she was more than willing to pay to escape “fear and persecution,” she said.
But passengers aren’t always charged the same amount.
“Each person is charged based on their own circumstances,” she said. “Those who can pay more are asked to pay more. The more you pay, the less dangerous the routes are that you might have to take.”
In China, the woman said, life simply became too unbearable.
Her decision to leave China was one made out of desperation, she said. “I’m so afraid to go back,” she said. “I know that something bad will happen to me.”
“During the Covid-19 pandemic, China has always upheld the concept of putting people’s lives first, and scientifically and accurately optimized epidemic prevention measures,” Pengyu said. “China’s epidemic prevention and control policy is scientific, effective, in line with China’s national conditions, and can stand the test of history. At the same time, I want to stress that China is a country under the rule of law, and the Chinese government protects the lawful rights of its citizens.”
Freedom for an instant
Onboard the boat in the waters off the Bahamas, large waves violently shook her and the other passengers. “I remember thinking we were all going to capsize,” she said.
But after many hours at sea, the boat finally stopped on a remote island. It was already close to midnight and the temperatures had plummeted. After a windy, uncomfortable night where she said the migrants were told not to turn on their phones for fear the light would alert authorities, she boarded a second boat at daybreak, headed for U.S. soil, Coral Gables.
“When we arrived, there was a lot of happiness on the faces of the other passengers,” she said.
But that happiness didn’t last long.
“Just two minutes later, we were all apprehended,” she said.
Since she was taken into CBP custody, the woman said she’s been treated very well.
“Everyone here has been very kind to me,” she said. “They’re even wishing me happy Chinese New Year.”
Customs and Border Protection did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
Her hope in coming to the U.S. was to eventually join relatives living in another state. Whether she gets that chance will be left to the courts.
“America is a land governed by laws and respect for human rights,” she said. “That’s why it’s the best country in the world.”
