Biologist Bret Weinstein detailed his recent trip to the Darien Pass on Thursday with Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson, warning that he had allegedly witnessed a mass Chinese camp.
Weinstein appeared on “The Tucker Carlson Encounter” to discuss his recent visit to the Darien Pass, known as one of the most treacherous ways migrants from South America travel to get to the United States. Weinstein stated that he had gone down to the location after writer Michael Yon invited him to witness the sites migrants had to go through to survive the journey.
The biologist described to Carlson the first camp he visited in San Vicente, Panama, noting how open migrants were to discussing their stories with the travelers. Weinstein then pivoted to contrast his first camp experience with a second one in Canaan Membrillo, Panama, highlighting for Carlson how it had been “built as a transit camp” for “almost” all Chinese migrants. (RELATED: Number Of Chinese Migrants Who Crossed Border In December Surpassed Previous Year Totals)
“But what I was going to tell you about the fact that this migration doesn’t appear to me to be just one thing is that we went to another camp called San Vicente, and everything in San Vicente is different than it was at Canaan Membrillo. San Vicente, first of all, it’s not a town. This is a camp that is built as a transit camp. It’s built of containers and various objects to house people. And it is almost entirely Chinese,” Weinstein stated.
“Chinese? That’s a long way from China,” Carlson jumped in.
“It sure is, and what’s more, in this camp, the rule that you’re able to go in and walk around and talk to people is not in evidence. The SENAFRONT, the Panamanian border control, actually forbid us to go into the camp. So we had to stay on the outside of it. We were also forbidden to photograph it. So what photographs we have were taken covertly,” Weinstein stated.
Ep. 71 Bret Weinstein traveled to the Darien Gap to understand who’s behind the invasion of our country. His conclusion: “it’s not a friendly migration.” pic.twitter.com/mY8TlrLPnm
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) February 1, 2024
“Wait, may I ask – so is it the government of China, do you believe, that’s funding this?” Carlson questioned.
Weinstein continued to claim that the Chinese migrants had been the “opposite of forthcoming,” stating that, unlike the San Vicente camp, they had “no interest in talking to outsiders.” The biologist also described the atmosphere of the camp, noting how there allegedly were an “overwhelming” amount of Chinese military-age men. (RELATED: ICE Confirms It Finally Nabbed Terrorist Allowed To Roam Free For Almost A Year)
“Well, let me tell you the other thing I found and then I think the answer to that will become clear. Outside of the San Vicente camp, the Chinese migrants are – you can interact with them. There are a couple of shops where they go to buy water, snacks or whatever. And so you can interact with them at those places. They are the opposite of forthcoming. They have no interest in talking to outsiders,” Weinstein stated.
“And I’ve been to dangerous places before, I’ve been to places where people fear their government and can’t talk to you because they feel it’s not safe. This didn’t feel like that at all. This felt like people who did not want to share information because it would be a mistake to do so,” Weinstein continued. “And what’s more, there was an incident where Michael, who has lived in China…tried to start up a conversation with a guy who claimed to be from Korea. Michael tripped him up and got him to speak Chinese and then there was uproarious laughter at the fact that he had tried to pull this caper on Michael, so it is not a friendly migration.“
“These Chinese folks who are overwhelmingly male military age, there are women present. I realized only this morning that in thinking back I saw few, if any, children in the Chinese migration. They were everywhere in the other places we visited but they were not present, as far as I remember, in the San Vicente camp,” Weinstein stated.
As the southern border has seen a record number of illegal crossings, concerns over who has entered into the United States have risen. According to federal data, the number of Chinese nationals crossing the border in December 2023 surpassed totals from previous entire years.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered 5,951 Chinese migrants who illegally crossed into the U.S. through the Mexico border. Additionally, CBP data showed that the number of caught illegal migrants on the terrorist watch list hit a new record for the first two months of the 2024 fiscal year.