Stay or go? Under Trump, dreams fade for Chinese who trekked to US

When he decided to leave his homeland in early 2023, he did so with the conviction that his future no longer belongs to there.

While he was heading to America, he dreamed of a more free society, a more just economy, and a life that lived in dignity – things he said could not be demanded in China, where the local government was destroyed by force to make room for real estate development.

To chase this dream, he started a journey of thousands of miles from China to Ecuador in 2023, and from this point, forests were launched as part of its long way. About two months later, he finally arrived in the United States.

Ban, a soft man in the late 1950s from a small village in Jiangshi Province in East China, is one of the tens of thousands of Chinese citizens who made the same trip in recent years.

College as Zou Xian Ke, or “Those who followed the line”, represent a new wave of migration led by the tightening of the authoritarian at home and faith – sometimes naive, desperately desperate – that the United States is still offering a fair snapshot in a better life.

The reasons for their exit varied, but their experiences once on American soil follow certain directions: many of them ended with isolation in the language, burdened with debts and surviving in an annoying work while they were waiting for their asylum claims to crawl through a massive migration system.

Some remain optimistic. Others collapse.

All of them, now, live in a long shadow of President Donald Trump’s political return – during which the poor relations of the United States of China have been strained in recent years.

Pan is one of the many Chinese immigrants I met for the first time two years ago. Like many of the group that he traveled with, he is now working in a Chinese restaurant, although he returned home, as he is proud of his agricultural dementia.

In America, these skills do not translate, because the soil conditions are different and do not speak English. The past life carries a few coins.

For a while after her arrival, she wandered by Ban from one city to another, sleeping on borrowed sofas or bung with his migrant colleagues. In the end, he fell in Baristo, California, a dusty industrial city.

His life today is a whistle inside a narrow radius. He cooks and sometimes waiting for tables in a restaurant during the day, the video is called his wife and children in China at night, and repeats the routine the next day. He lives in a kitchen -connected room.

For strangers, and even for his family at home, a life may seem an unbearable monitor. But for him, he is not defined by what he lacks, but what no longer exists. No earth attacks. No officials of intervention. No fear of arbitrary punishment.

“Do not understand my family,” he said with half of my family. “They ask why you left a comfortable life behind it. But here, even if it is simple, it is free.”

Feeling that freedom is calm but stubborn. Two years ago, in a narrow hotel room in Kito, Ecuador, he told me on the eve of his journey that even if he died on his way, it would be worth it.

He still says the same. “All this,” repeat, “it is worth it.”

Like many new arrivals, PAN has no meaningful social circle – challenges of the language of escalation and cultural difference limits his life to interactions with his migrant colleagues.

Sometimes, he travels to Los Angeles to join the protests outside the Chinese consulate. This is partly recognized to enhance his asylum demand by creating a general record of political opposition. But this is also because after decades of silence, it can.

On June 4, the Tiananmen Square-a date was cleaned of the public memory in China by the authorities-stood up outside the consulate chanting the slogans of the anti-Shiites of the Communist Party. On that day, among the familiar crowd, James discovered.

James was a young man in his early thirties, who participated from western China, who traveled with a general of Ecuador through the Dary’s gap and even the American border. But if it is a story that a quiet ritual story, James is more dynamic and more anxious.

After his release from the Migration Center in the United States, James wore cash vehicles in Monterey Park, a suburb of the Chinese majority East Los Angeles. He finally bought a cargo car, went to Palm Springs, and made the car all of his livelihood and home.

Truck the truck with sleep bags, gas boxes, and a laptop – this is all that he needs to be satisfied with his life. During the day, he delivers food throughout the city. At night, it extends to a 24 -hour gym and sleeps with open windows.

James has always been a fraud in China. But after Covid installed the economy and political reservations, it left a small breathing space, he decided to leave.

James told me: “At least, your hard work brings here hope, but in China, you can work for ten hours a day and do not see a future.”

But hope alone is not enough. For almost all new arrivals, including James and Pan who are large content with their lives in the United States, Trump’s political return re -instantly restored.

The ICE and Customs wave throughout Southern California, and Trump’s continuous pushing to deport uncomfortable immigrants, and emerging United States tensions, including a battle on commercial tariffs, have all deepened a climate of madness.

While I was re -delivered the migrants I first met in 2023, the clashes between the demonstrators and the government police forces were revealed in the center of Los Angeles due to the recent ice raids.

The raids were part of the president’s goal at the age of “the largest deportation” in the history of the United States – a pledge that helped him win the White House again last year. A survey conducted by CBS News/Yougov found in early June 54 % of Americans saying they agreed to his deportation policy.

The administration says that its raids primarily targeted people who have criminal records, although critics say innocents have fallen into the drive – which caused anxiety among immigrants.

Almost all migrants who have now been connected now keep what is called the EDA (EAD) delegation document (EAD) that allows them to work legally in the United States, but they have not been granted the official asylum status. In the Trump campaign on the ice chimney, people with the same status of these immigrants were arrested completely.

But what is the leadership of fear is the sense of the phrase – if these raids reach Chinese society and when and when these raids will reach Chinese society, or when the next decline in the relations between China and the United States.

Between Trump’s presidencies, relations between the United States of China had barely improved when Joe Biden was served at the White House. The Democrats earlier remained in Trump’s tariff in place, and tensions increased as Beijing escalated its speech on the position of US ally, Taiwan.

For some, all this lock prompted a question that many Chinese immigrants were quietly asking themselves: Does America deserve that?

Kevin, a man in his thirties from the Chinese province of Fujian, did not think about it. Like Ban and James, Kevin traveled through Latin America to reach the United States. But the American dream that he once believed was now feeling a mirage.

When I asked him how stable in the Saint Gabriel Valley in California, where he lives with his wife and newborn, he pointed to the ice raids in Los Angeles and answered: “Everything feels uncertain. So no, I do not feel stable.”

Kevin’s disappointment works deeply. “America, for me, feels that it has become another China,” he said. “Darwini community.”

“If I knew what would be really the case, I may not have come.”

For a long time, what linked all these immigrants was the journey they shared on this treacherous path.

But now, this connection has an additional layer: the emotional hidden that they are now being swimming against two years after their arrival in the United States. It is a creeping awareness that their place in America is risky, and that the country that bets on everything may not have space for them after all.

The Zukawi wave was desperate – but also by almost a childish belief in the American idea: that this country, for all its faults, is still offering a bullet. Delivery function. A slice of the ground. A bed behind a restaurant no one at night.

Now, with Trump’s portrayal of China as a threat to national security, warning “infiltration”, and the overwhelming facts on many things related to China, even those modest hopes feel more siege than ever.

The effect is clear. This new wave of Chinese immigrants – many of them are still waiting for asylum – now feel that they are stuck in a busy: lack of confidence by the Americans, unwanted by Beijing, and sometimes suspended in legal form.

General, for anyone, prepare for the worst. “The future here is no longer certain anymore,” he said, standing outside the restaurant in Barsto. “I am worried not to allow me to stay. If I go back to China …”

He was late. For a moment, he said nothing. Then he looked at me, fixed, quiet, resigned.

He said: “This thought,” unbearable. “

This was the same appearance that I remembered from the hotel room in Kito, two years and a world since: anxiety escapes from tired eyes, but below it, the essence of absolute determination.

Regardless of what is happening, Ban told me, he resides.