Beijing-proxy Triad "purchased" Belize for human-smuggling into USA

Unheeded Warnings: The Bureau investigates Latin American smuggling routes used by Chinese state-sponsored mafias

Former Bamboo United Triad leader “White Wolf” runs a pro-Beijing political party in Taiwan probed in Chinese election interference fund transfers. His Triad allegedly used Belize to smuggle illegal immigrants into the United States.

Hong Kong was centre of a Chinese corruption network that bribed governments across the globe, even buying an entire Central American region, in order to traffic illegal immigrants into the United States in operations closely related to drug-smuggling and diaspora repression, American and Canadian intelligence from the 1990s indicates.

“Passports of Convenience,” a confidential, 65-page report filed from Canada’s Hong Kong Consulate in 1993, relied heavily on American intelligence, which warned "an underground community of smuggled aliens has been created in the United States which in many ways is subject to the control of Chinese criminal groups.”

The author Brian McAdam made a number of provocative findings regarding Beijing’s alliance with Triads in human smuggling and corruption going “sometimes to the highest level of some governments.”

This included the Chinese Communist Party’s leader in Fujian Province and Beijing’s security services partnering with Hong Kong’s Sun Yee On Triad in human smuggling, according to sensitive U.S. government information cited in McAdam’s reporting.

But his personal notes regarding Passports of Convenience say the report was quickly buried in Ottawa, possibly because Canadian diplomats were among numerous international officials corrupted in Hong Kong, enabling transnational Chinese mafias to gain a foothold in Vancouver and Toronto according to McAdam.

"In all my postings I have never known an area where so many diplomats were participating in criminal and corrupt activities," McAdam wrote. "For example, Nicaraguan diplomats in Hong Kong were found to be smuggling heroin for a 14K Triad drug trafficker.”

Passports of Convenience listed over 30 countries that facilitated illegal immigration from China through many sophisticated schemes.

Simply, Triads purchased travel documents from governments not flagged with U.S. security concerns, allowing Chinese purchasers to enter U.S. immigration streams expeditiously.

Chinese gangsters also bought citizenships in Latin American and Caribbean nations through immigrant investor programs, giving them easy access to the United States.

In 1993 Canada estimated the majority of illegal immigrants from China launched from Fujian, where Triads and Chinese officials managed smuggling networks, and Triads purchased about 70 percent of their passport supply for Chinese nationals with the rest going to migrants from Taiwan and Hong Kong.

“Such passport issuance completely negates criminal and security intelligence networks, as persons can totally change their identity,” McAdam’s report says.

It adds U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) informed Canada “more than 20 different Triads and gangs are involved in Chinese Alien smuggling” into the United States where “organized crime uses illegal aliens as soldiers in criminal activities.”

McAdam’s report identified Guatemala, Belize, Argentina, Bolivia, Panama, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Fiji, Gambia, Brazil, Bangladesh, Philippines and Barbados among the nations prominently used in Chinese illegal immigration routes during 1993.

In one stunning example, the report says Canadian files showed “Cabinet Ministers of Belize being involved in the sales of passports of convenience to PRC nationals and Palestinians,” while Triad leaders controlled chartered aircraft from Belize “to smuggle PRC nationals into the USA and Canada.”

“Intelligence information we obtained from one of our case files has revealed that one of the Belize passport sellers is also linked to the head of the United Bamboo Taiwanese Triads,” McAdam reported.

A 1995 report posted by the U.S. State Department that cites Passport of Convenience’s American sources reveals more.

“The Latin American connection goes deeper still: from this base, Taiwanese Triad members reportedly ‘purchased the country of Belize and its Minister for Immigration … turning Belize into an air gateway for entry of Chinese aliens into the United States,’” the U.S. report says, citing testimony from INS consultant Willard Meyers, an American immigration lawyer.

Leaders from United Bamboo, the Taiwanese Triad that reportedly captured Belize’s government, are now recognized as Beijing’s proxies in election-interference operations against Taiwan according to a 2023 report from Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based organization, which says “the Chinese Communist Party allegedly utilizes criminal organizations to destabilize society.”

While some of the governments, documents and smuggling routes used by Triads have shifted since McAdam wrote Passports of Convenience, the underlying schemes and Beijing’s strategic aims have not, according to U.S. intelligence experts.

One expert that asked not to be named due to sensitivities in Sino-American diplomacy, said just as Passports of Convenience details smuggling connections between the Sun Yee On Triad and Chinese Communist Party in Fujian Province, American officials currently believe numerous Chinese leaders are cooperating with Triads worldwide.

While it may seem incredible to citizens of North America, the U.S. government believes Beijing weaponizes mafias and corruption to gain leverage over other states.

The U.S. expert said the commonality between spiking migration from China detailed in McAdam’s 1993 report and the current surge of Chinese refugee claimants at the U.S. southern border, which is about 20 times higher than 2022, is that nations receiving loans and infrastructure investments from Beijing, usually in Latin America, the South Pacific and Asia, are used by Triads to transit illicit cargo.

These states become staging grounds for Chinese mafia operations of all sorts, including human and narcotics trafficking and money laundering, as well as Beijing’s foreign interference, the U.S. intelligence expert said.

And in the longterm Triads facilitating illegal immigration into the United States work together with Chinese intelligence to leverage American diaspora communities, the expert said, which includes transnational repression run through so-called CCP “overseas” police stations connected to Fujian crime bosses.

Thirty years ago Passports of Convenience predicted national security and sovereignty threats posed by Chinese diaspora repression.