The Cuban-American congressman Carlos Gimenez warned of the possibility that Cuba is linked to the arrival last Wednesday of a group of illegal Chinese migrants to the Florida Keys.
Following the arrest of 17 Chinese citizens in Key Largo (11 men and six women), the representative for Florida issued a declaration in which he expressed his concern about the growing arrival of Chinese citizens to US territory.
“It really worries me that they are now trying to make their way through the Keys, my part of the country,” he told the Daily Mail in an interview published Sunday. “I understand that the Chinese are having more and more influence. “There are more and more infrastructure projects and more activity in our hemisphere, especially in Cuba.”
Giménez requested more information from Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to evaluate who these individuals are and the threats they may pose. In that sense, he warned of the growing influence of the Chinese Communist Party in Cuba and other countries in the region, such as the Bahamas, where they participate in the construction of infrastructure.
“I am proud to be part of the Armed Services Committee, the Homeland Security Committee and the new Select Committee on China and I have requested additional information from all federal agencies involved,” said the congressman, speaking out against “the short-sighted border policies of the Biden administration that have endangered our country and impacted our South Florida community.”
At the end of July, four immigrants of Chinese nationality, who set sail from Cuba on a sailboat, were rescued by Mexican authorities after shipwrecking on Isla Mujeres, according to official sources.
A statement from the Isla Mujeres Police reported this Monday that members of the General Directorate of Public Security and Traffic, police agents and personnel of the Mexican Navy managed to rescue the four castaways. who stated that they were originally from China, who came from Cuba and they were heading to Belize, “when their boat developed a fault and was adrift.”
A few months earlier, in April, agents from the United States Border Patrol (USBP) and the Southeast Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) detained a vessel for an alleged case of maritime smuggling.
"Agents responded to an intercepted maritime smuggling event near Key Biscayne and they met 13 migrants (China, Ecuador, Cuba, Jamaica, Dominican Republic). The event is under investigation," the agent said in X Walter N. Slosar.
In June, reports revealed that Cuba had granted permission to China to build a surveillance facility on the island, located about 90 miles south of Florida. The revelations came after the incident in which a high-altitude spy balloon from China It floated across the United States for about a week in late January and early February before being shot down off the Carolina coast.
US authorities have detected at least 100 surveillance problems in recent years in which Chinese citizens broke into military bases, many of whom presented themselves as tourists, reported the Wall Street Journal last month.
"We have seen many, many Chinese citizens say that they are tourists and things like that and they have been photographing sensitive facilities," Giménez added to the Daily Mail. According to this medium, So far this year, 4,293 Chinese immigrants have already been detained at the border, more than double the 1,987 detainees throughout 2022.
"This detention of Chinese citizens shows how an open border allows people from enemy nations to enter our communities," he told WFLA the executive director of the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, Dave Kerner.
Last fiscal year, which ended earlier this month, the United States experienced a record 3.2 million border apprehensions at the border, according to USBP. According to AP, President Joe Biden will meet next month with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco.
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