The thousands of Chinese migrants headed to the US-Mexico border are losing a key entry point to America

• Thousands of Chinese migrants flew into Ecuador last year in hopes of walking into the US.

• But Ecuador is now cutting its visa-free access to Chinese citizens after offering it for years.

• Ten times as many Chinese people were detained at the US border in 2023 as in 2022.

Ecuador plans to suspend visa-free access for Chinese travelers starting July 1, closing off a popular arrival spot used last year by thousands of Chinese migrants trekking to the US-Mexico border.

Since 2016, Ecuador has allowed Chinese nationals to enter its borders without a visa and stay for up to 90 days.

But in a statement Tuesday seen by Business Insider, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility said it was ending the program "due to the unusual increase in irregular migratory flows of Chinese citizens" who overstayed their 90 days.

It is only one of two nations in the Americas that offer visa-free access to Chinese nationals. The other is Suriname, a smaller country of about 618,000 people.

The Ecuadorian ministry said roughly half of all Chinese arrivals "have not left through regular routes and within the times established by law."

Many people have used the country as a "starting point to reach other destinations in the Hemisphere," the ministry added.

The Niskanen Center assessed in May that Chinese travelers entered Ecuador 48,381 times in 2023 but left the country legally only 24,240 times that year. The deficit was "by far the highest number of any nationality," the US think tank wrote.

It comes amid a surge in Chinese arrivals that year, with a 235% increase compared with the previous five-year average, per the Niskanen Center.

The visa-free access recently made Ecuador a major entry point into the Americas for Chinese migrants looking to travel through Central America and reach the US-Mexico border.

In response to Ecuador's Tuesday decision, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the country "firmly opposes any form of smuggling activities."

"In recent years, Chinese law-enforcement agencies have cracked down on crimes that hinder national border management and have maintained a high-pressure crackdown on various smuggling organizations and criminals engaged in smuggling activities, achieving remarkable results," the spokesperson said.

How Chinese migrants use Ecuador to get to the US

Thousands of migrants fly into Ecuador before traveling through Colombia, where they begin a grueling trek on a perilous, cartel-run route through a stretch of jungle called the Darién Gap.

If successful, they emerge in Panama. More than 15,500 Chinese migrants were counted exiting the Darién Gap in 2023, per the Washington-based think tank The Wilson Center.

"This figure is nearly eight times as many from the same period in 2022 and more than 40 times that of 2021," wrote Joshua Peng, a program associate in refugee and displacement research at The Wilson Center.

Many migrants then travel to Mexico, attempting to reach the US through its southern border.

US border officials said they detained 37,000 Chinese migrants attempting to cross the border in 2023, or 10 times the number detained in the year before. The true number of those attempting to cross the border was most likely higher.

The flow of Chinese migrants continued to surge in 2024, with CBS reporting in February that it observed 600 migrants, many of whom were Chinese, entering the US in a single day.

The House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability said in May that the number of Chinese nationals encountered by authorities at the US border in March had jumped 8,000% from the same period in 2021.

Illegal immigration from the southern border has been rising in political prominence in the US, with Republican leaders pushing for increased border security and saying Southern states are unable to cope with a surge in migrants.

Data on Chinese arrivals in Ecuador gives some clues to the demographics of migrants reaching the US. According to the Niskanen Center, Shanghai is the Chinese region with the highest per capita rate of people leaving to reach Ecuador, with 274 arrivals for every 1 million people in Shanghai.

Hong Kong is second, with 257 arrivals per 1 million people, followed by Beijing, with 161 arrivals per 1 million people. Xinjiang is sixth, with 24 arrivals per 1 million people.

Correction: June 21, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of the country Colombia.

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