So Are All Immigrants Manchurian Candidates? Peter Schweizer on How Mexico, China, and the Muslim Brotherhood Are Weaponizing Immigration

00:00 Andrew Keen: Hello. My name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen on America, the daily interview show about the United States.

00:33 Andrew Keen: Hello everybody. I saw a great cover recently, uh, with all sorts of interesting words: "Islamists want weaponized immigration." And it featured a photo of my guest today who has a new book out, Peter Schweizer: The Invisible Coup, uh, which in some ways I think is all about why Islamists and others want what he calls, or at least what, uh, one person imagines as weaponized immigration. Uh, Peter is joining us from just outside Tallahassee, where he lives. Uh, Peter, congratulations on the new book. Is it a conspiracy theory, uh, Peter? This word gets used a lot. Are you a conspiracy theorist? Are all American enemies plotting to invade the country with all sorts of naughty immigrants?

01:21 Peter Schweizer: Uh, I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory, no. And, and I would say that on a couple of bases. Number one, uh, what I spend a lot of time doing in the book is actually quoting from foreign officials: Mexico, China, members in the Muslim Brotherhood, saying what their goals and objectives are, uh, with immigration. So the first point is, this is what they say their motivation is in encouraging and fueling mass migration. The second thing I would say is, it’s not my, my point to make that somehow they’re all getting down together around a table. This represents a confluence of interests. Uh, the interest that Mexico has, that China has in mass migration, in "beating back American civilization," which is the term that they use for it. Uh, they don’t necessarily have the same view of what the world should look like or what the United States should look like, but they know the current state of the United States is something they do not want. So it’s like a, it’s like a Venn diagram where you have two circles and there’s overlap, and they overlap on that point, uh, where they believe that the United States, uh, needs to be transformed, and one of the ways in their words they want to do that is through mass migration.

02:37 Andrew Keen: So perhaps they’re accidental conspiracists. The cover of the book features five characters: Claudia Sheinbaum—and I know sometimes authors don’t choose what comes on their covers, but it’s an interesting cover—Claudia Sheinbaum, Xi, uh, AOC, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. Uh, the three Americans, are they involved in this? Why do they get on the cover, Peter?

03:04 Peter Schweizer: Well, you, you have two, uh, forces that are at work here. You have those that are pushing mass migration from overseas. That would include the government of Mexico, for example, or China, which has a different methodology but does the same thing, and the Muslim Brotherhood. But you have those in the United States that welcome mass migration for their political gain and benefit. And again, these are their words, not mine. So that includes, uh, basically the establishment of the Democratic Party and progressives like AOC, who see mass migration as transformational to the United States. In other words, we can fundamentally shift the politics of America by bringing in people, primarily from the developing world, uh, who have a less individualistic view, on average, of what government should be doing, uh, have much more trust, uh, in a centralized government that is providing an abundance of social services. So the cover, which was essentially picked by me—I didn’t design it, but I absolutely endorsed it—uh, I think is really a reflection of these two forces: the pushing and the pulling of mass migration. And the inspiration here really was the Mariel boatlift of 1980, uh, where Fidel Castro seeded mass migration from Cuba with, you know, sociopaths, criminals, intelligence agents, pushed them into the United States. Uh, the American president at the time, Jimmy Carter, said, "We welcome them with open arms," to which Fidel Castro told his aides, "Well, we’re going to fill his arms with shit." Um, that I think is an example of what weaponized migration, what we’re experiencing now is on a thermonuclear scale. That involved 125,000 Cubans; in this case, we’re talking about tens of millions of people from the developing world.

04:57 Andrew Keen: Yeah, I don’t think anyone would probably argue on, on the Cuba front. Um, are there, in your mind—and when I look at these kinds of arguments, it seems to me as if you’re suggesting that there are good and bad immigrants to America. That some of them come genuinely because they want a better life, because they want political freedom, because they want a barbecue and eat apple pie. And others come because they’re somehow agents, knowingly or unknowingly, of an evil foreign government from maybe Mexico or China, or you talk about the Muslim Brotherhood—I don’t think there are any Muslim Brotherhood governments, but maybe organizations. Um, is that right, Peter? Is that what you’re saying, that American immigration is made up of both good and bad people from the point of view of the country itself, in terms of American interests?

05:51 Peter Schweizer: Yes, I, I, that is part of the argument. The other argument I make, however, is that this weaponized immigration, uh, reflects the reality that 50 or 75 or 100 years ago, mass migration to the United States was, was not really organized. People would come, they would bring themselves, their family, their language, and their culture. What they’re doing now is the same, but they’re also bringing with them political networks and organizations. So, migrants are now being organized inside the United States. And just to give you a very specific example of that—and this shocks a lot of people, by the way, I, before the book came out, I, I briefed half a dozen senators, members of Congress, senior people in the administration. They were shocked by this: right now in the United States, there are more than a dozen Mexican senior officials who live full-time in the United States. They serve in the Mexican Senate and in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, which is their House of Representatives, and their job is to represent Mexicans in the United States before the Mexican government. So already you have this intrusion into American sovereignty. I mean, the, the notion that the United States would go to Canada and say, "Oh by the way, we’re going to have elected officials in Canada now that are representing Americans living here," Canada wouldn't tolerate that. And yet, this is what Mexico is doing. But these elected officials are also going around the United States and engaging in, you know, organizing violent protests, organizing peaceful protests, getting along in American electoral politics. Uh, one of these officials is a guy named Alejandro Robles. Uh, he lives outside of Los Angeles, serves in the Mexican Parliament. In 2025, in his own words, he went across the United States to "quote, organize the militancy, end quote," against the Trump administration. Um, so he met with Antifa groups, uh, he met with other violent protest organizers to ramp up resistance to what Trump was doing. This is manifestly different than what we saw even 40 or 50 years ago from Mexican immigration. They see this diaspora in the United States as a strategic tool. That is the language that the Mexican government uses. So, yes, there are good immigrants, there are bad immigrants, but they are being organized and weaponized in a way that is designed to undermine the United States.

08:24 Andrew Keen: So, you know, I take your point on the strategic tool, so let’s use the example of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum. I don’t really understand why she wants to undermine the United States. Perhaps I could understand it from a, certainly from a Cuban or a Chinese or a Venezuelan, Syrian, Afghan point of view. But what’s in it for Claudia and what’s the difference between her and the President of Ireland or Italy, or, or, or any other country where lots of people want to come and live in America?

09:00 Peter Schweizer: Well, it’s a great question. Um, so one of the things that, that I, uh, do in the book is I quote, uh, more than a dozen senior Mexican officials, as recently as 2025, talking about how mass migration is a means by which Mexico can reassert, re-exert authority over states they lost from the United States in the 19th century. Now, when I first ran across this, I thought, "This is ridiculous. What are they talking about?" And yet, um, there’s actual evidence that they do have political influence in the United States. So the first is, is what their ambition is. I don’t think Ireland, I don’t think Spain, I don’t think Germany has that ambition in the United States. But the second thing is the Morena party, which is now the ruling party of, of Mexico and has taken a series of steps to consolidate their political power. Uh, they view, um, their mission and their agenda as one that goes beyond borders. So, Alejandro Robles...

10:04 Andrew Keen: Are you suggesting then that Claudia Sheinbaum, who’s right in the middle of the book, uh, right in the middle of, uh, your cover—that she’s a revanchist? That she’d like to seize back Arizona or New Mexico or California and re-incorporate it into Mexico? Is that your argument?

10:25 Peter Schweizer: Well, the, the argument is that’s what people in her administration say. So in December of 2024, a, a government report from a senior aide to Sheinbaum, saying there are 39.9 million Mexicans living in the United States, we are reclaiming the territory that was stolen from us. I quote, uh, you know, the President of the Mexican Senate, who is a Morena party official, saying that United States California is occupied territory and mass migration is a means by which we are retaking it. Now, do they literally expect that these states are going to become states of Mexico? I’m not so sure. But what I do know is that they are using this as a means by which they can exert political authority in our country. And let me just give you one example. Um, in May of 2024, an election year in the United States, the Mexican consulate in Oklahoma City set up a meeting. They brought diplomats from consulates all across the United States—Mexico has 53 consulates in the United States, the UK has six—uh, and they brought those diplomatic officials together and they met with Democratic Party activists. And in the transcript of that meeting, which I quote in my book, um, the conversation was, "We changed California from red to blue, meaning from Republican to Democrat. We changed Arizona from red to blue. How do we change other states from red to blue?"

11:54 Andrew Keen: Well, that’s a different, that’s a different issue of political—it’s different from actually seizing back parts of California and re-incorporating it into Mexico. Those are very different arguments, aren’t they?

12:07 Peter Schweizer: Well, my, my point is, I’m not suggesting that they actually expect that California becomes part of Mexico. Maybe they do. I mean, that’s what they talk about. But at least they are exerting semblance of, of elements of sovereignty in the United States and they are mobilizing and working to mobilize members of their diaspora to shift the political direction of the United States. Um, which is manifestly different than what we saw even 40 or 50 years ago.

12:35 Andrew Keen: Peter, from a political point of view, I’m wondering, I mean, you’re, you’re clearly on the right, uh, you’re, you’re not a great fan of the Democrats. Wouldn’t it be in your interest to ship off California back to Mexico and then you really wouldn’t have any political problems anymore? I mean, couldn’t you be in on this conspiracy too? Couldn’t Trump or Steve Bannon, your friend, or yourself, couldn’t you be on the phone to Claudia Sheinbaum saying, "You can have California. We don’t want it anymore"?

13:02 Peter Schweizer: No, I, I think I would, uh, like to keep California. I like the territorial integrity of the United States. And look, my view is, um, states can vote for who they want. California wants, uh, Gavin Newsom, they certainly can. My problem is you don’t want foreign governments—I don’t think anybody wants foreign governments trying to make those decisions for you, especially in a manner in which Mexico is doing it. So my argument has been there is this issue of deporting illegals in the United States, particularly those that are criminals. I also believe part of that should be dismantling these political networks in the United States. Mexico would not tolerate them from the United States, Canada certainly wouldn’t. Um, I don’t know why we tolerate it from Mexico in our country.

13:51 Andrew Keen: You’ve written extensively on China and this issue. Uh, two of your last books were Red-Handed and Blood Money, both big successes, very influential and controversial. I’m in Northern California and in Silicon Valley, Peter, so a, a lot of our tech companies are made up of many Chinese and Indian immigrants. How does the, the China argument play here? And why is it different from the large amount of Indian immigrants, especially tech workers, who come into Northern California?

14:27 Peter Schweizer: Well, that’s a great question. Um, so the reason that President Xi is on the book is, again, the theme of the book is weaponized immigration. So what do I mean in the context of China? What I mean in that context is, um, this industrial-scale, uh, use of birth tourism, uh, by the Chinese. Birth tourism is this idea that, um, you know, you take your pregnant wife or girlfriend, you bring her to the United States, she gives birth here, that child is now a US citizen based on an interpretation of the 14th Amendment. As soon as that child is able to fly again after they’re a week or so old, they are flown back to China, where they will be raised, uh, under the shadow of the CCP. Um, the question is, what is the scale of this? Um, our federal government doesn't know because when you have a birth certificate in the United States, it does not list the nationality, uh, of the parents. So we have no idea in the United States. Based on research we did, um, in the Chinese literature, the Chinese government has looked into this, Chinese research firms have looked into this, and the CCP, by the way, has encouraged this. They’ve run articles in the People’s Daily, uh, which is the main organ, uh, of communication for the Chinese Communist Party, explaining how members of the Chinese elite have a right to do this, according to the US Constitution, and they’ve, they’ve allowed this vast industry of more than a thousand birth tourism companies to operate and advertise freely in China. And the numbers from China are eye-popping. Um, roughly speaking—and I go through the, the specific estimates from specific groups in China—roughly speaking, um, they say that, um, roughly 100,000 a year over the last 13 years have come to the US, or have come to US possessions like Saipan, for the express purpose of giving birth and getting citizenship for their children. And what that means in the context of weaponized immigration is we are looking at, if these Chinese estimates are correct and I’ve no reason to challenge them, we are looking at more than 1 million quote-unquote "US citizens"—because they are US citizens according to this interpretation of it—that are growing up in China. And when they turn 18, they’re going to be able to vote in elections, donate to political candidates, take government jobs. Uh, this is a massive problem. So in the context of Chinese immigration, that is what I mean when I, uh, am talking about weaponized immigration, and of course there are a couple of other examples as well.

17:21 Andrew Keen: So you’re saying that the, the Chinese are a problem but the Indians aren't because the Chinese government is somehow involved in a conspiracy to bring more Chinese people into the United States, whereas the Indian government isn't.

17:36 Peter Schweizer: I, I have not seen any evidence, um, that the Indian government has a systematic, uh, effort to engage in birth tourism on this scale. And I would also point out that India, compared to China, is a relatively free country. So, you know, China...

17:54 Andrew Keen: Does that really matter whether it’s free or not? I mean, Mexico is relatively free, maybe a bit too free. Um, is the issue for you isn’t about the freedom of the country, it’s about these governments conspiring to send all these people to the United States.

18:10 Peter Schweizer: Yes, but my point would be that in the case of China, they have absolute control. If they wanted to shut down birth tourism, they would do so tomorrow. They would simply ban the advertising and say, "You can’t exit China and go to the United States, uh, if you’re pregnant, for the purposes of giving birth." India does not exert that control over its population in terms of their ability to leave the country. So, to me, it’s a question of what are foreign powers doing? Do they see this as an organized systematic tool? Let’s remember, as I point out in the book, China was doing this on, in, in Hong Kong, uh, for a while. Hong Kong obviously smaller than the United States, they were doing this in Hong Kong and it got to the point that more than half of all births in Hong Kong were to Chinese nationals who were getting citizenship for their children. So in 2013, the then-Hong Kong government banned the practice and said, "This is subversion. China’s doing this as a form of subversion."

19:11 Andrew Keen: So, but, but let’s just get to the immigrants themselves. We’ve all of course seen the movie The Manchurian Candidate. There was only one candidate in that movie. Um, are you suggesting that all these hundreds of thousands, millions of quote-unquote "immigrants," legally or otherwise, that they’re all Manchurian candidates? That all these little bombs are being sent into the United States by anti-American foreign governments?

19:40 Peter Schweizer: Well, I think in the case of birth tourism, uh, this million that are growing up in China, raised in China, they are children of the elites. They are children of military officers, intelligence officers. They represent an intelligence threat. I would say to other Chinese that come to the United States, in contrast to Indians—that’s the example you were giving—uh, they are quite different. Uh, Chinese immigrants themselves will complain that if they’re working in a research lab, they may have no particular interest in helping the Chinese government, but the Chinese government can exert enormous pressure on their family back in China, uh, and say, "Look, you are going to do this. If you don’t do this, we’re going to cause problems for your family." The Chinese, um, security law, intelligence security law from 2017, says that any Chinese national that is asked by the government to perform intelligence duties should do so. I don’t know of any equal, uh, statute that exists in India, and I don’t know that India is threatening the family members, the Indian government is threatening the family members of Indian immigrants that are in the United States in sensitive research jobs.

20:53 Andrew Keen: Well, the Indians can stay. Peter, um, you, as I said, you grew up, uh, in I don’t know what you call it, Middle America or certainly traditional America. Tell me a little bit about your background. Where did your family come from originally? Do you have a mythology or a narrative in your family where all the Schweizers originally came and why they came to this country?

21:19 Peter Schweizer: Uh, it’s a great question. Um, so my parents were immigrants. My father, uh, was from Switzerland. He grew up outside of Zurich, went to Stockholm, Sweden, to study as an engineer, met my mother, who’s Swedish, uh, and they got married in Sweden. My sister was born in Sweden. Uh, they then came to the United States to the state of Vermont where my father worked as an engineer. That’s where I was born. They eventually became citizens in 1977, but I grew up outside of Seattle, Washington. My father was an aeronautical engineer for the Boeing airplane company. It was a great place to grow up. Um, you know, I was regaled, uh, with stories about Europe, uh, spent a lot of time in Europe. I have family, uh, in Europe, and um, you know, it sort of formed me in terms of the way that I view the world. My mother, uh, would talk about, um, you know, socialism in Sweden and how it was destroying the country. Sweden today, I think, is much more on a classical liberal model than the socialist model it was in the 1970s at that time. So that really shaped and formed me, uh, and I was the son, uh, who grew up, you know, during the heat of the Cold War. So I’ve always looked at the world in the context of friends and enemies and have had a particular interest always in stratagems, uh, that foreign powers might be using against the United States.

22:53 Andrew Keen: Do you think, I mean, given the logic of your argument, The Invisible Coup and the way in which, uh, foreign governments send their, what Castro called "their trash," to the United States, might the Soviets have been doing this? Might there have been a model even before Castro of sending their, their Jews to America? Because after all, they, they caused all sorts of trouble; a lot of them turned out to be leftists, Peter.

23:25 Peter Schweizer: Uh, well, there were refuseniks that came here. But no, the Soviets never I think quite had the dynamic way of viewing subversion as certainly the Chinese have or other more modern iterations have. The Soviets were always top-down. They didn't allow, uh, their intelligence networks to operate freely enough, uh, so it could, uh, you know, reach the point where, uh, they were engaging in this kind of behavior. So, I think it was really Fidel Castro in 1980 with the Mariel boatlift. As I recount in the book, uh, as that was going on in the summer of 1980, Fidel Castro went to Nicaragua where he met with Sandinista leaders to celebrate the first anniversary of them seizing power. Some of the people there included Daniel Ortega, who is now the, the leader-dictator of Nicaragua, and Lula, the, the president of Brazil. And I think that was the impetus for the weaponization of immigration. So when Joe Biden opened up the border, essentially in, in 2021, what did Daniel Ortega do? He said to the world, "Charter a plane, fly to Nicaragua, we’ll charge you $100, uh, for a, quote-unquote, Nicaraguan visa, we’ll get you the border and we’ll help you get into the United States." And the estimates are that close to 2 million people used that Nicaraguan air portal, uh, in the mass flood of humanity that came across the border, uh, during the Biden administration. So this is I think a strategy that Castro developed, uh, he really originated it. It’s been used other times in ancient...

25:09 Andrew Keen: That’s Joe Biden, Sleepy Joe, on the cover of your book. Two quick questions finally, Peter, you’ve been very generous with your time, I know you’ve got to run. One question is, should Americans of all sorts—liberals, conservatives, the left and the right—should we be giving up on the idea of the American dream? From your book, whether or not, uh, whatever its politics, it seems to suggest that we shouldn’t really trust our instincts. Is that whatever the romance of the American dream, of these poor immigrants coming to these shores and making something of themselves, the reality of politics is, is quite different. So, are you suggesting that the American dream maybe never existed and it certainly doesn’t exist now?

26:01 Peter Schweizer: No, I would not say that. Um, I think that, uh, the challenge, uh, with immigration is what I’ve described the weaponization as. We need to deal with these sort of systematic efforts, the exploitation of birthright citizenship, these political networks, deal with that. Then we can have a conversation about what the level of legal immigration should be. I actually favor, uh, some legal immigration, but there needs to be vetting. You need to be vetting...

26:33 Andrew Keen: You sound almost surprised by that. You’re surprising yourself. That you, you, you think that we should have a little bit of immigration. Presumably from India, but maybe not from China. And very finally, Peter, you, as I said, your, your politics are not unambiguous, you’re sympathetic I think to the Republicans, to Donald Trump. In terms of this broader argument, um, you mentioned the Islamists. How does the current situation in Iran, how does that play into your arguments in The Invisible Coup? And is the American invasion or war of Iran, however you want to call it, is it part of a response to the invisible coup?

27:21 Peter Schweizer: No, I don’t think so. Um, I think that, uh, and people can have a vigorous debate about the national security threats by Iran. I think this was more a function of what was going on in the Middle East, uh, and the threats of the Iranian nuclear program and the geopolitics there. I think the immigration component only applies here in the sense that the Muslim Brotherhood has developed these political networks inside the United States. We need to be aware of that.

27:54 Andrew Keen: You, you keep on mentioning the Muslim Brotherhood. They don’t seem—they’re not in power anywhere, are they?

28:02 Peter Schweizer: No, but it’s a very, uh, powerful network, uh, that has been existed, um, uh, for decades. Um, they’ve been run out of countries—Egypt, for example, bans them—they are allowed to operate in Qatar and other countries. Even the government of Austria, uh, for some reason has outlawed them because of their connection, uh, to subversive networks. And a lot of the groups in the United States that are the most militant, uh, whether it’s CAIR, whether it’s the Muslim Students Association, these are all outgrowths of the Muslim Brotherhood. So it makes it harder to deal with because you’re not dealing with a nation-state, uh, that has physical borders, but it still I think represents unique challenges that we need to be aware of because, again, as I quote them extensively in the book, they view mass migration as a means by which they can subvert the United States and advance their interests here.

29:00 Andrew Keen: Well, there you have it, Peter Schweizer. From Switzerland, although he’s somewhat ambivalent about people coming after him, certainly from China, from Central America, perhaps even from the Middle East. The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon. Peter, real honor to have you on the show. Thank you so much.

29:21 Peter Schweizer: It was great conversation. Thanks for having me.