Stay or go? Under Trump dreams disappear for the Chinese who have gone to us

When the Lord decided to leave his homeland at the beginning of 2023, he did it with the conviction that his future was no longer owned.

When he headed for America, he dreamed of a more free society, a fair economy and life that lived with dignity – the things he said could never demand in China where his home was forcibly demolished by local self -government to give way to real estate development.

In order to chase this dream, he went on a journey of thousands of miles from China to Ecuador in 2023, from that moment he went to the jungle as part of his long route. About two months later he finally reached the US.

Peng, a soft man in the late 50’s from a small village in Jiangley in eastern China, is one of the tens of thousands of Chinese citizens who have made the same journey in recent years.

Known spoken as Zoh Hajn Ke, or “those who walked along the line”, they are a new wave of migration caused by authoritarian delay at home and faith – sometimes naive, often desperate – that the US still offers a fair shot in a better life.

Their causes of the outcome ranged, but their experience once on American soil adheres to certain tendencies: many turned out to be isolated language, burdened with debt and survive at work at the concert when they expect their asylum statements through the predominant immigration system.

Some remain hopes. Others solve.

And all of them, now, live in the long shadow of the political return of President Donald Trump – during which the poor relations between the United States and China have been even more sour over in recent years.

The Lord is one of several Chinese migrants, which I first met two years ago. Like many groups he traveled with, he now works at a Chinese restaurant, though at home, he was proud of his know-how.

In America, these skills are not translated because the soil conditions are different, and it does not speak English. Past life keeps little currency.

For a while after his arrival, the gentleman wandered from town to city, slept on borrowed sofas or approaching migrants. In the end, he landed in Barstava, California, a dusty industrial city.

His life is discharged today in a dense radius. He prepares and sometimes waiting for tables at the restaurant during the day, at night the video of his wife and children in China and repeats the routine the next day. He lives in a room attached to the kitchen.

For strangers, and even to their family, the Lord’s life may seem unbearable. But for him this is determined not by what is missing, but what is gone. No attacks of land. No intervened officials. No fear of an arbitrary punishment.

“My family doesn’t understand,” he said with half a million. “They ask why I left a comfortable life behind. But even if it’s simple, it’s mine. It’s free.”

The feeling of Lord’s freedom quiet but stubborn. Two years ago, in a tight hotel room in China, Ecuador, he told me on the eve of his journey that even when he died on the way, it is worth it.

He still says the same. “All this,” he repeated, “worth it.”

Like many aliens, Peng has no significant social circle – the language of attachment and the cultural difference causes his life interaction with migrants.

Sometimes he goes to Los -Angeles to join protests outside the Chinese consulate. He admits that he partially strengthens his asylum requirement, setting a public record of political dissenters. But it is also because after a decades of silence it can.

On June 4, on the anniversary of the massacre on Tiananmen-Data Square, purified by the Chinese public memory, he stood outside the consulate again, changing the anti-Kitan communist parties. On that day, he noticed James among the acquaintances.

A young man in the early 30’s, who came from Western China, James traveled from the Lord from Ecuador through Darin’s gap and to the US border. But when the story of the Lord is quiet stoicism, James is more kinetic, more restless.

After being released from the American detention, James jumped between the monetary concerts in Monterei Park, the suburbs of the Chinese majority east of Los Angeles. In the end, he bought a cargo minibus, drove to Palm -Springs and made a car to existence and home.

The van is filled with sleeping bags, gas cones and a portable charger – that’s all he needs to satisfy his life. During the day he delivers food through the city; At night, he parking for about a 24-hour gym and sleeping with open windows.

James in China has always been fuss. But after Covid committed the economy, and political repression left little breathing space, he decided to leave.

“At least your hard work here brings hope, but you can work more than ten hours a day in China and do not see the future,” James said to me.

But hope is just not enough. For virtually all aliens, including James and Pan, who are in great content in the United States, Trump’s political return has returned to gnawing instability.

A wave of immigration and customs assistance (ICE) raids on southern California, a steady impetus for Trump to deport unoccupied immigrants and increased US-China tension, including battle for trading tariffs, all deepened the paranoia climate.

When I was again connected with migrants I first met in 2023, clashes between protesters and government police forces unfolded in the center of Los Angeles on the occasion of recent ice raids.

The raids were part of the President’s target to introduce the “largest deportation operation” in the US History – a promise that helped him again win the White House. The CBS News/YouGOV poll, conducted in early June, showed that 54% of Americans said they approved his deportation policy.

The administration claims that its raids are primarily aimed at people with convictions, although critics say that innocent people have been driven – causing anxiety among migrants.

Almost all the migrants I have contacted again consider what is called a work permit (EAD) document that allows them to work legally in the US but have not received official asylum status. Trump’s ice -raid expansive campaign has been arrested exactly the same status as these migrants.

But what drives fear is a sense of unknown – when and when these raids reach the Chinese community, or if there may be the next decline in China’s relationship.

Trump’s two presidents, US relations and China have virtually improved when Joe Biden served in the White House. The Democrat continued to tariffs for Trump earlier, and tensions grew when Beijing grew its rhetoric over the status of US ally Taiwan.

For some, all wakefulness has raised the question that many Chinese migrants quietly began to ask: is it worth America?

Kevin, a man in the thirties from the Chinese province of Fujian, did not think about it. Like Peng and James, Kevin traveled through Latin America to get to the US. But the American dream, in which he once believed, feels like a mirage.

When I asked him how he settled in California in the San -Habril Valley, where he lives with his wife and their newborn son, he referred to the raids in Los -Angeles and replied: “Everything feels uncertain. So no, I don’t feel arranged.”

Kevin’s disappointment goes deep. “America, for me, feels it becomes different China,” he said. “Darwin Society”.

“If I knew how it really would be, I wouldn’t come,” he continued.

For a long time, which is due to all these migrants, there was a journey they shared on this insidious road.

But now this binding has an additional layer: the emotional submarine, which they are now swimming against two years after they arrived in the United States. This is a creeping awareness that their place in America is unstable, that the country they are betting on everything cannot take place for them.

The Wave Wave was caused by despair – but also almost a childhood belief in the American idea: that this country, for all its shortcomings, still offered dignity. Delivery work. Slide the earth. The bed behind the restaurant in which no one knocked at night.

Now that Trump reflects China as a threat to national security, a warning about “infiltration” and promising extensive repression on many things related to China, even these modest hopes feel more siege than ever.

The effect is obvious. This new wave of Chinese migrants – many of them are still waiting for asylum – now feel caught in cages: distrustful Americans, undesirable Beijing, and sometimes weighted in legal suspended state.

The gentleman, for example, attracts worse. “The future is no longer confident here,” he said, standing near the restaurant in Barstow, watching the motorway traffic blurry. “I’m worried that I may not be allowed to stay. And when I go back to China …”

He was distracted. For a moment he said nothing. Then he looked at me, stable, calm, resigned.

“This is the thought,” he said, “unbearable.”

It was the same species that I remembered from this hotel room in the whale, two years and the world therefore: we are experiencing tired eyes, but under it the core of absolute determination.

Whatever happens, the gentleman told me he remained.