espionage
EXCLUSIVE: Chinese ‘Cyber Police’ Agent Runs Online Network Helping Illegal Immigrants Flood Into US
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
“We’re allowing an element that is completely beyond our law to be established firmly as a beachhead in the United States of America, and the people of America are going to pay a severe price, much worse than we are paying even now”
A private social network run by a self-identified Chinese government agent provides illegal immigrants with resources to get into the U.S. and evade border authorities, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation discovered.
The American Self-Guided Tour Channel is a Chinese-language group with over 8,000 members on the encrypted instant messaging platform Telegram that serves as both a forum for discussing Chinese illegal immigration and a hub for documents detailing specific routes to the U.S., a DCNF review of the channel found.
Documents in the Telegram channel translated by the DCNF identify U.S. border wall gaps, instruct Chinese nationals on how to answer questions from Border Patrol agents and provide scripts for requesting asylum.
Furthermore, the channel is overseen by an individual who spreads Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda, bans accounts who fail to toe the Party line and identifies himself as a Chinese police officer.
“We’re allowing an element that is completely beyond our law to be established firmly as a beachhead in the United States of America, and the people of America are going to pay a severe price, much worse than we are paying even now,” North Carolina Republican Rep. Dan Bishop said after learning about the findings of the DCNF’s investigation.
Customs and Border Protection data shows that the overwhelming majority of the roughly 48,000 Chinese illegal immigrants encountered by U.S. authorities in 2024 have been single adults — and experts warn that “military-aged males” make up the lion’s share.
Bishop described the 1,100% spike in Chinese illegal immigrants since fiscal year 2022 as “historically unprecedented,” and told the DCNF that the inner workings of China’s human smuggling networks have largely remained a mystery to lawmakers up until now.
“Even people, like me, who’ve seen a lot of it have not yet totally come to grips with the sort of depth that you’ve described,” said Bishop, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee’s Oversight, Investigations and Accountability subcommittee.
The DCNF discovered the American Self-Guided Tour Channel and several related Telegram groups facilitating Chinese illegal immigration after analyzing a Chinese illegal immigrant’s abandoned cell phone, which was found near the California-Mexico border by a San Diego man in January 2024.
Telegram did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
‘Try Alternate Identities’
Through a months-long review of the American Self-Guided Tour Channel, the DCNF discovered that the group contains documents instructing Chinese nationals on how to navigate the U.S. immigration system, including scripts for claiming asylum and answering questions from Border Patrol agents.
One document translated by the DCNF advises those wishing to apply for a green card in the U.S. to “be sure to prepare a story about your persecution in advance.”
Another document provides responses to questions Border Patrol agents may ask in order to establish whether or not an asylum-seeker has a credible fear of persecution from their home country. Under current law, migrants who claim “credible fear” of persecution can seek asylum in the U.S.
“Even if moving would be inconvenient, can you live safely elsewhere in the country?” reads one of the hypothetical questions.
“No, because the situation I’m facing is nationwide,” the suggested answer states. “Even if I move to another place, I’ll be under threat just as before.”
Another post provides templates on how to craft asylum claims based on political, religious, racial, sexual and even gender persecution, despite women comprising only a small fraction of Chinese illegal immigrants.
“I am [name, ancestral hometown] nationality, I was born on [birthday]. Because I suffered gender-based violence and discrimination in my motherland, I am seeking asylum in [country],” the document’s template on gender persecution states. “My family forced me to marry, they wanted me to marry a man much older than me. When I refused, they beat me and threatened me saying that if I didn’t obey, they’d kill me. After marrying, my husband started physically and mentally abusing me, I was forced to leave my home and live in hiding. I tried seeking help from the local government, but they’re either corrupt or unwilling to help me. If I am forced to return to [motherland], I fear for my life, there I will face more violence and discrimination.”
Documents stored on the channel indicate a relatively sophisticated understanding of the U.S. immigration system, with some featuring intricate flow-charts to map out various potential U.S. immigration pathways.
One such flow-chart suggests that, as a last resort, those who’ve received a deportation order, but lack a passport to return to their countries, may consider starting the immigration process over with a false identity.
“You can try alternate identities, [but] the difficulty is relatively high and Trump may invite you to a meeting with state security agents in the future,” the document states, referring to former President Donald Trump.
‘Crossing Point’
The American Self-Guided Tour Channel also serves as a hub for travel guides facilitating Chinese illegal immigration, some of which identify specific border crossing points between the U.S. and Mexico, the DCNF discovered.
The guides vary in their geographic scope, with some focusing on travel between multiple countries, such as from China to Ecuador, which Rep. Bishop told the DCNF doesn’t require a travel visa for Chinese nationals.
“Essentially without visas, as I understand it, they can fly to Ecuador, and then they have an overland route and come up and come right through the border,” Bishop said.
The Telegram channel’s guides commonly list Quito, Ecuador, and Necocli, Colombia, as the first and last travel locations in South America for Chinese illegal immigrants.
Other guides on the channel provide more detailed advice on how to travel through a single country. One guide for Mexico falls into this category and features a series of Google Map screenshots that chart a path between Tapachula, Mexico and Laredo, Texas.
While most of the guides concern travel through South and Central America, several also focus on where and how to cross the U.S. southern border.
One such document identifies 15 border wall gaps along the southern border, including 12 in California as well as crossing points in Arizona and New Mexico.
This guide also provides Chinese nationals with basic instructions on what to carry and how to make the crossing.
“Take a taxi to a location near the wall crossing point, get out, and head straight in, carrying a few hundred dollars in cash for random contingencies,” the document advises.
The DCNF confirmed the existence of several of the crossing points while visiting the California border in June 2024.
Bill Wells, the mayor of El Cajon, California, told the DCNF that Chinese nationals now constitute a significant portion of crossings near San Diego.
“When I’ve been out at the border, most of my interactions have been with Chinese people,” Wells said. “I’ve come across groups of Chinese people standing on the side of the road in the middle of the night waiting to be picked up. I’ve come across migrant encampments, where there’s 100 or so Chinese people waiting to move on to the next stage, maybe 30 yards from the fence where they just crossed.”
Despite this, Wells told the DCNF that local officials remain in the dark about how the human smuggling networks operate.
“We have no idea,” Wells said. “You would think that something of such major importance to not only the nation, but to municipalities, you would have somebody from the government calling you and saying, ‘Hey, this is what we know. This is what’s going on. This is how it’s going to affect you or not affect you.’”
Wells told the DCNF that he believes Chinese illegal immigration poses a serious national security threat to the U.S. and pointed to multiple sensitive military and public utility sites close to the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego.
“There’s just so much to worry about from a committed enemy,” Wells said.
‘Cyber Police’
The DCNF’s review of the American Self-Guided Tour Channel also discovered that its owner — @wjackcn, or “Jack W” — claims to work as a cyber police officer stationed in China.
“Yes, I am cyber police,” Jack W stated on April 30, 2024, after an account in the channel asked him if he was a cyber police officer.
Cyber police serve China’s Ministry of Public Security by monitoring website content and spreading propaganda, according to federal authorities.
After identifying himself as a cyber police officer, Jack W outlined his policing duties in a post in which described himself as being “responsible for national security affairs, fighting reactionaries and foreign hostile forces.”
Later that day, Jack W directed channel members interested in national security work to apply to China’s premier civilian intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security.
“If you want to work for the Ministry of State Security, please use the method of participating in the National Civil Servant exam,” Jack W told members of the Telegram channel.
Although the DCNF was unable to confirm Jack W’s affiliation with the Ministry of Public Security or Ministry of State Security, a review of the account’s posts found that it promoted Chinese illegal immigration and has banned members for expressing “hurtful opinions towards the motherland.”
In one instance, after a now-deleted account called for the CCP to be overthrown on April 22, 2024, Jack W banned 20 accounts.
The next month, Jack W announced he’d banned multiple accounts who’d criticized Chinese police officers.
“Those who disparaged an Urban Management and Law Enforcement video have already been banned,” Jack W announced on May 20, 2024, referring to a Chinese government agency that the U.S. nonprofit Human Rights Watch has described as a “thuggish para-police” tasked with enforcing non-criminal administrative regulations.
Jack W’s Telegram channel has also promoted CCP propaganda.
On June 4, 2024, the American Self-Guided Tour Channel posted an image of a tank with the caption: “Celebrating the 35th Anniversary of the Defeat of the Western-Backed Colour Revolution,” in reference to the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, during which the Chinese government slaughtered as many as 10,000 pro-democracy protesters, according to the former British ambassador to China.
A DCNF review of the Telegram channel also discovered that, in addition to Jack W, several other members have identified themselves as Chinese police officers, military personnel and CCP members.
Rep. Bishop described Chinese illegal immigration as “the most astonishing threat.”
“Chinese nationals presenting at the southern border of the United States were almost unheard of previously,” Bishop told the DCNF.
In May 2024, Bishop chaired the House Homeland Security Committee’s Oversight, Investigations and Accountability subcommittee hearing concerning the approximately 8,000% increase in Chinese illegal immigration the U.S. has experienced since March 2021.
The hearing followed a January 2024 DCNF investigation revealing an internal Customs and Border Protection email showing that the Biden administration dramatically simplified the vetting process for Chinese illegal immigrants in April 2023 by reducing the number of interview questions Border Patrol agents are required to ask from roughly 40 down to just five.
“The experts that testified before the Subcommittee on Oversight that I chaired when we had a hearing on this established fairly persuasively that there is no vetting,” Bishop told the DCNF. “It’s a perfunctory, quick interview, and they move on into the country and are released.”
“China is the foremost adversary of the United States on the world stage,” Bishop warned. “Something’s descending on the United States that we should never have allowed to occur.”
Featured image courtesy of Denice Flores.
espionage
Inside Xi’s Fifth Column: How Beijing Uses Gangsters to Wage Political Warfare in Taiwan — and the West
A new Jamestown Foundation report details how China’s Ministry of State Security and allied triads have been used to subvert Taiwan’s democracy as part of Beijing’s united front.
Editor’s Note
The Bureau has previously reported on how Chinese state-linked crime networks have exploited Canada’s real estate market, casinos, and diaspora associations, often under the cover of united front work. One of these groups, the Chinese Freemasons, has been linked to meetings with Canadian politicians, as reported by The Globe and Mail ahead of the 2025 federal election. The Globe noted that the Toronto chapter explicitly advocates for the “peaceful reunification of Taiwan.” The Jamestown Foundation’s new findings on groups active in Taiwan — including the Chinese Freemasons, also known as the Hongmen, the related Bamboo Union triad, and the China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP) — show that Taiwan is the epicenter of a strategy also visible, though less intensively, across democracies including the United States. The parallels — from Vancouver to Sydney to New York to Taipei — should alert governments that the “fifth column” problem is international, and it is growing.
TAIPEI — At a banquet in Shenzhen more than two decades ago, Chang An-lo — the Bamboo Union boss known as “Big Brother Chang” or “White Wolf” — raised a glass to one of the Communist Party’s princelings. His guest, Hu Shiying, was the son of Mao Zedong’s propaganda chief. “Big Brother Chang,” Hu reportedly toasted him, an episode highlighted in a new report from the Jamestown Foundation.
Hu would later be described by Australian journalist John Garnaut as an “old associate of Xi Jinping.” That link — through Hu and other princelings Chang claimed to have met — placed the Bamboo Union leader within the orbit of Party elites. Garnaut also reported that the Ministry of State Security (MSS) had used the Bamboo Union to channel lucrative opportunities to Taiwanese politicians. According to Jamestown researcher Martin Purbrick, a former Royal Hong Kong Police intelligence officer, such episodes show how the CCP has systematically co-opted Taiwanese organized crime as part of its united front strategy.
“The long history of links between the CCP and organized crime groups in Taiwan,” Purbrick writes, “shows that United Front strategy has embedded itself deeply into Taiwan’s political life.”
Chang’s global influence is not a relic of the past. The Bureau reported, drawing on leaked 1990s Canadian immigration records, that intelligence indicated Chang’s triad had effectively “purchased” the state of Belize, on Mexico’s southern border, for use in smuggling illegal immigrants into the United States. But Chang is more relevant than ever as fears of Beijing invading Taiwan grow. In August 2025, seated in his Taipei office before a PRC flag, he appeared on a YouTube program to deny he led any “fifth column.” Instead, he insisted Taiwan must “embrace” Beijing and cast himself as a “bridge for cross-strait peace.”
His denial came just months after Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice accused CUPP of acting as a political front for organized crime and foreign interference. Police suspected more than 130 members of crimes ranging from homicide to drug trafficking. Prosecutors charged CUPP operatives with taking $2.3 million from the CCP to fund propaganda. In January, the Ministry of the Interior moved to dissolve the party outright, submitting the case to Taiwan’s Constitutional Court. By March, a Kaohsiung court sentenced CUPP deputy secretary-general Wen Lung and two retired military officers for recruiting Taiwanese personnel on behalf of the PRC. According to court filings, Wen had been introduced by Chang to the Zhuhai Taiwan Affairs Office, which in turn connected him to a PLA liaison officer.
President Lai Ching-te, in a March national security address, warned that Beijing was attempting to “divide, destroy, and subvert us from within.” Intelligence assessments in Taipei describe the Bamboo Union and CUPP as part of a potential “fifth column,” prepared to foment unrest and manipulate opinion in the event of an invasion.
The historical record shows why Taipei is so concerned. Chang’s name has shadowed some of Taiwan’s darkest chapters. In the 1980s, he was suspected of involvement in the assassination of dissident writer Henry Liu in California. He was later convicted of heroin smuggling in the United States, serving ten years in prison. After returning to Taiwan, he fled again in 1996 when authorities sought his arrest, spending 17 years in Shenzhen. During those years, he cultivated ties with influential Party families. At the Shenzhen banquet, Washington Post journalist John Pomfret wrote, Hu Shiying introduced him as “Big Brother Chang,” signaling acceptance in elite circles. Garnaut, writing over a decade later, noted that Hu was an “old associate of Xi Jinping” and that Chang had moved comfortably among other princelings, including sons of a former CCP general secretary and a top revolutionary general.
These connections translated into political capital. When Chang returned to Taiwan in 2013, he launched the China Unification Promotion Party — a pro-Beijing group openly advocating “one country, two systems.” He declared his mission was to “cultivate red voters.” CUPP cadres and Bamboo Union affiliates became visible in street politics, clashing with independence activists and disrupting rallies. During U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2021 visit, they staged counter-protests echoing Beijing’s line.
The ideological warfare runs even deeper. A Phoenix TV segment from 2011 recalled how a Bamboo Union elder declared in 1981 that he “would rather the CCP rule Taiwan than have Taiwan taken away by Taiwan independents.” Chang himself has echoed this sentiment for decades. In 2005, he launched a Guangzhou-based group called the Defending China Alliance, later rebranded in Taipei as CUPP. His activism has spanned disruptive protests, nationalist rallies, and propaganda campaigns amplified through China-linked media channels.
Purbrick situates these developments within a wider united front playbook. Taiwanese triads and Chinese Freemason associations are courted as grassroots mobilizers, intermediaries, and psychological enforcers. A recent report from the Washington Post has also linked the Chinese Freemasons to the powerful 14K Triad, a global network deeply implicated in Chinese underground banking networks accused of laundering fentanyl proceeds for Mexican cartels through the United States. The triad–Hongmen nexus complements other CCP efforts: online influence campaigns, cultural outreach, and intelligence recruitment inside Taiwan’s military.
The implications extend beyond Taiwan. In Canada, Australia, the United States, Southeast Asia, and beyond, intelligence agencies have documented how PRC-linked triads launder drug profits, fund political donations, and intimidate diaspora critics. These groups benefit from tacit state protection: their criminality overlooked so long as they advance Beijing’s strategic objectives. It is hybrid warfare by stealth — not soldiers storming beaches, but criminal syndicates reshaping politics from within.
For Taiwan, the Bamboo Union and CUPP remain immediate threats. For other democracies, they serve as case studies of how united front tactics adapt across borders. President Lai’s warning that Beijing seeks to “create the illusion that China is governing Taiwan” resonates internationally.
Before leaving journalism to establish an advisory firm, John Garnaut himself became entangled in the political fallout of his reporting. He was sued by a Chinese-Australian real estate developer from Shenzhen, who had funneled large donations to Australian political parties. The developer, later publicly implicated in the case by an Australian lawmaker under parliamentary privilege, successfully sued Garnaut for defamation in 2019. Subsequent disclosures confirmed the tycoon’s implication in an FBI indictment involving United Nations influence schemes and notorious Chinese operative Patrick Ho, later linked to a Chinese oil conglomerate accused of targeting the Biden family in influence operations. Together, these episodes highlight the global reach of united front networks.
By Garry Clement
Columnist Garry Clement, former RCMP anti–money laundering expert, argues Canada’s leaders have built prosperity on sand — leaving the nation exposed to collapse unless urgent reforms are made.
Canada is celebrated abroad as a safe, prosperous, and open society. But beneath the surface, a far more precarious reality is taking shape. The pillars of our economy — land, real estate, natural resources, and immigration — have been left vulnerable to foreign manipulation, criminal exploitation, and political negligence. The result is what can only be described as a sandcastle economy — striking at first glance, but fragile. Like the parable of the house built on sand, it is a foundation vulnerable to give way when the storm comes.
Investigative journalist Sam Cooper has long warned that foreign capital and organized crime have deeply infiltrated Canada’s real estate market. On Prince Edward Island, the Bliss and Wisdom Buddhist group quietly acquired swaths of farmland and property, raising questions about how religious fronts with Chinese connections gained such leverage in a province with limited oversight. In Saskatchewan, Chinese investors have been buying up valuable farmland, raising alarms about food sovereignty and the lack of restrictions on foreign ownership of agricultural land. Meanwhile in British Columbia, governments continue to downplay or outright ignore the extent to which transnational money laundering has fueled a housing market now completely detached from local incomes.
All of this has unfolded against a backdrop of minimal transparency, weak beneficial ownership registries, and virtually no effective enforcement. The same blind spots that allowed casinos and luxury real estate in Vancouver to become laundromats for dirty money are now being replicated nationwide.
The most urgent threat tied to these financial blind spots is fentanyl. Canada has become one of the world’s top destinations for proceeds from synthetic drug trafficking — a crisis that has devastated families from coast to coast. Chinese triads, Mexican cartels, and local gangs launder profits through casinos, shell companies, and real estate deals. Yet federal legislation continues to lag behind, leaving law enforcement outgunned. Every toxic opioid death in Canada is not only a health tragedy, but also a reminder of how organized crime is exploiting our lax financial controls. While other countries have implemented tough anti-money laundering regimes, Canada remains dangerously complacent.
That same complacency extends to national security. Canada has repeatedly delayed designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, despite overwhelming evidence of its involvement in financing terrorism and conducting influence operations abroad. Our allies — including the United States — have acted. Canada, however, remains an outlier, seemingly unwilling to confront the risk of Iranian proxy activity operating in plain sight within our borders.
Immigration policy reveals similar weaknesses. Foreign students, particularly from India, have become central to the financial survival of colleges and universities. Yet a growing number are not here primarily to study. Instead, education visas have become a backdoor into Canada’s workforce, particularly in industries such as trucking. The tragic Humboldt Broncos bus crash in 2018 exposed gaps in training and licensing in the trucking sector. Since then, reports have continued to surface of foreign students entering the industry without adequate skills — a risk not only to public safety but to the integrity of our immigration system. Ottawa has failed to adequately regulate this pipeline, preferring instead to rely on the tuition dollars and temporary labour it generates.
Editor’s Note: Forthcoming Bureau investigations, citing U.S. government sources, question how widespread fraud and Indian transnational crime capture of Canada’s commercial trucking industry have fueled the flow of fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine — turning the country into a weak link for its international allies.
The threads running through these crises are clear: willful blindness, weak laws, and short-term political expediency. Land and natural resources are being sold without regard for sovereignty. Real estate markets are distorted by laundered money. Organized crime groups funnel fentanyl profits into Canada with ease. The IRGC operates without effective restriction. And the education system is exploited as a labour channel, with little oversight. Canada is, in effect, trading away its long-term security for short-term economic gains.
Politicians, bureaucrats, and regulators too often dismiss warnings as alarmist or xenophobic, when in fact they reflect real risks to the stability of the country. A sandcastle can stand tall on the shore, admired in the moment, but everyone knows what comes next. Unless urgent steps are taken — enforcing transparency in land ownership, restricting foreign control of farmland and resources, tightening anti-money laundering measures, confronting hostile foreign actors, and restoring integrity to the education and immigration systems — collapse is inevitable.
The signs are already here: families priced out of homes, farmers squeezed out of land, fentanyl overdoses climbing, and a public losing faith in the fairness of the system. Canada prides itself on being open and inclusive. But openness without vigilance is vulnerability. Like unwise stewards, our leaders have been gifted with a land of overflowing abundance, and yet they have squandered its potential through short-sighted choices. That failure must be corrected — immediately and wisely — if the nation is to not only thrive, but survive.
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Former senior RCMP officer Garry Clement consults with corporations on anti-money laundering, contributed to the Canadian academic text Dirty Money, and wrote Canada Under Siege, and Undercover, In the Shady World of Organized Crime and the RCMP
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