Beijing and Washington have quietly resumed cooperation on the deportation of Chinese immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, as the two countries are reestablishing and widening contacts following their leaders' meeting in California late last year.

After China suspended cooperation in August 2022, the United States saw a drastic surge in the number of Chinese immigrants entering the country illegally from Mexico. U.S. border officials arrested more than 37,000 Chinese nationals on the southern border in 2023, 10 times the number during the previous year, further exacerbating tensions over immigration going into the presidential election.

In a statement sent to The Associated Press this week, the Chinese foreign ministry said Beijing was "willing to maintain dialogue and cooperation in the area of immigration enforcement with the U.S.” and would accept the deportation of those whose Chinese nationality has been verified.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last month told the U.S. House during a budget hearing that he had “an engagement" with his Chinese counterpart to ensure that China would begin to accept removal flights so "we can deliver a consequence" for Chinese immigrants who do not have a legal basis to remain in the U.S.

Mayorkas also said there was one deportation flight to China, for “the first time in a number of years.”

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to an AP request for details on the cooperation and the number of Chinese nationals who have been deported or await deportation. Without cooperation from the Chinese government, the U.S. cannot send back Chinese immigrants who have no legal status to stay in the country.

It is unclear when cooperation resumed, but a charter flight carrying a small but unknown number of deportees landed in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang on March 30, according to Thomas Cartwright of Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks deportation flights. The group has not detected other flights to China, but it's possible that some immigrants could have been deported on commercial flights, Cartwright said.

The number of Chinese deportees was certainly small on the March 30 flight because the Gulfstream V, which took off from Arizona and stopped in Texas and Alaska before reaching China, typically has a seating capacity of 14. It also made a stop in South Korea before heading back to the U.S., according to Cartwright.

But it was a sign that Beijing and Washington are once again cooperating on deportation, after the Chinese government stopped the cooperation in response to a visit by Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker, to Taiwan. Beijing claims sovereignty over the island and strongly opposes any official contact between the island and the U.S.

Beijing also halted high-level military-to-military dialogue, cooperation on anti-narcotics and talks on climate change, plunging relations to a low.

It wasn't until November 2023 when President Joe Biden hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping in Woodside, California, that the two sides agreed to restart the military-to-military talks and cooperation in fighting fentanyl. Dialogue on climate change had resumed before then.

In April, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell complained that Beijing was doing little to curb the outflow of Chinese migrants. Beijing countered that it “firmly opposes any form of illegal immigration and severely cracks down on all forms of illegal immigration organizations."

The number of Chinese migrants arrested by the U.S. border patrol peaked in December but it showed a downward trend in the first three months of 2024.

Democrats urge Biden to act on immigration as Trump threatens deportations

Immigration advocates and Democratic lawmakers are urging President Joe Biden to prioritize long-term undocumented immigrants as his administration weighs executive actions to curb record crossings along the southern border.

In a letter signed by more than 80 lawmakers, including members of the Congressional Hispanic and Progressive caucuses, the Democrats ask Biden to “take all available actions to streamline pathways to lawful status for undocumented immigrants” ahead of the November election.

“Deporting all such individuals — as former President Donald Trump has threatened to do if reelected — would devastate the American economy and destroy American families,” they added.

The letter offers concrete steps they say the White House could take, including streamlining the process by which DACA recipients, or immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, can seek to change to a nonimmigrant status.

Lawmakers also ask Biden to unify families by allowing undocumented migrants married to U.S. citizens to seek parole on a case-by-case basis and reduce processing times for green card cases so that those migrants could be eligible to work.

The chair of the Hispanic Caucus, Rep. Nanette Barragan, D-Calif., said in a statement that Biden “should seize this critical moment by exercising his Executive Authority to rebuild our broken immigration system.”

“We urge him to provide pathways to citizenship and protections for the millions of long-term undocumented residents who have contributed to the rich fabric of the United States,” she said.

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The new push follows a letter in March from Senate Democrats, led by Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, of Illinois, and Immigration Subcommittee Chair Alex Padilla, of California, outlining the same call to action.

”As the Biden administration considers executive actions on immigration, we must not return to failed Trump-era policies aimed at banning asylum and moving us backwards,” Padilla told NBC News in a statement.

On Monday, NBC News reported that Biden is considering using his executive authority in the coming weeks to potentially restrict the number of migrants who can enter the U.S.

The administration has been in touch with immigration advocacy groups ahead of any executive order.

A Department of Homeland Security official with knowledge of the discussions said the White House would most likely invoke power reserved for the president in Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows a president discretion over who is admitted into the U.S.

Under that authority, Customs and Border Protection would be directed to block the entry of migrants crossing over from Mexico if daily border crossings passed a certain threshold. It’s similar to a provision of the border bill negotiated by a bipartisan group of senators earlier this year, which was killed by Republicans, in part, at Trump’s urging.

Advocates are worried that the policy would be too restrictive on asylum, as are some Democrats who opposed the bill in February and called for a legal pathway to citizenship for undocumented people in the U.S. to be included in the text.

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus lobbied the administration over months to no avail, with Democratic leadership eventually giving up its long-held red line on immigration reform to unlock aid to Ukraine amid a Republican blockade.

The GOP rejected the bipartisan compromise regardless, effectively sinking all near-term prospects for Congress to tackle an issue that has plagued the U.S. government for years.

Nonetheless, Padilla said this is Biden’s “opportunity” to “provide relief for the long-term immigrants of this nation.”

Padilla is leading a news conference Wednesday afternoon with lawmakers and advocates from FWD.us, American Families United, UnidosUS and CASA to spotlight the letter to Biden.

The president of FWD.us, an immigration advocacy group, said in a statement that most Americans “don’t have the opportunity to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of American families — but President Biden does.”

”He has the legal authority to provide affirmative relief to the spouses of U.S. citizens, and other longtime undocumented community members,” Todd Schulte said. “We hope, and believe, he will act soon to protect these American families.”

'In the crosshairs': Massive number of migrants from this foreign adversary are illegally entering US

There were more than 1,000 apprehensions of Chinese nationals crossing the U.S. border illegally in the last week, a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) source tells Fox News.

Border Patrol agents apprehended 1,026 Chinese nationals in the last week alone, the source said. Of those, 98.5% were caught in the San Diego Sector.

San Diego saw 1,011 encounters, Yuma Sector saw 10, while there were two in El Centro Sector and two at the northern border. There were no apprehensions of Chinese nationals in Texas.

The latest numbers come as the border has seen a dramatic increase in the numbers of Chinese nationals, a trend that has raised national security concerns and fears of espionage from some Republicans.

The San Diego Sector saw more than 200 encounters in two separate days last week. On Thursday, agents encountered 223 migrants, after encountering 262 on Wednesday.

That means that more Chinese illegal immigrants crossed illegally into the sector in two days than across the entire southern border in all of FY 21 – when 342 migrants were encountered.

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Overall, across the border, numbers have increased dramatically since FY 21. There were 1,970 encounters in FY 2022, over 24,000 in FY 2023 and so far there have been over 24,200 encounters so far this fiscal year.

Some Republicans have raised concern about the possibility of espionage from those coming across the border. Recently, House Republicans warned that the Chinese Communist Party "wants the chaos and devastation" that comes from fentanyl coming in to the U.S. Illicit fentanyl is primarily made using Chinese precursors by Mexican cartels and then moved across the southern land border.

Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents all rank-and-file Border Patrol agents nationwide, told Fox News earlier this year that the majority of the Chinese border crossers are single adult males of military age.

"That is a very scary prospect. We know that China does not like us. We know that we are in the crosshairs of China," he said. "And they are exporting so many people to our country, and you have to really fear about that."

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At a recent House Appropriations Committee hearing, acting ICE Director Patrick Lechleitner was asked by Rep. John Rutherford, R-Fla., to identify the top countries that are the most difficult to return nationals to when deported from the U.S. – and including China in that list.

"We've got Bhutan, top of the list there, Cambodia, they've been challenging, the People’s Republic of China, although we’ve had some recent cautiously optimistic progress with the Chinese, so I want to say it’s moving in the right direction there."