It’s the American thing to do. A young Chinese man who bravely risked his life to covertly film and document the Chinese Communist Party’s mass detention camps targeting Muslim Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang has an asylum case pending, but has been detained by ICE for months and is facing deportation.
Either Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, or if needed, President Trump himself, should intervene to release Guan Heng from custody and grant his valid asylum petition.
Going forward they should also enforce exceptions for others like him.
This isn’t one of Joe Biden’s “show up at the border and ask for asylum” as a way for any illegal foreigner to enter the country, and then simply stay.
This is a textbook case of why we have asylum, to protect those individuals specifically targeted for repression and imprisonment by authoritarian foreign, often enemy, regimes, simply for exercising their basic rights, or uncovering horrible abuses by their governments.
This is essentially what America is all about. And it matters immeasurably to people like me.
My parents were allowed legal entry to the United States as political exiles from Communist Cuba. They quickly gained residency and citizenship. I was born in the United States, and partly in gratitude for America’s benevolence, and out of a sense of duty, I served as a combat arms and intelligence officer in the U.S. Marine Corps.
I also served as a military diplomat at U.S. embassies overseas, representing our great Republic. Later, I ran for state and federal office. And I am only one of a great many immigrants, exiles, and refugees, or their children, who have served, or are serving.
Conservatives, Republicans, and MAGA should be promoting the correct use of the asylum system, not simply allowing those who truly deserve asylum to be thrown out with the illegal aliens who don’t legitimately merit it.
We also shouldn’t be the ones letting Democrats lead on this issue. This is a basic conservative principle.
But in this case, and others involving illegal aliens who served in the military and are being detained and deported, Democrats are the ones righteously leading.
In a letter to Noem, Democrat Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking member of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party, urged the immediate release and approval of Guan Heng’s asylum application.
In his letter, Krishnamoorthi stressed the moral and legal obligations America has to protect human rights whistleblowers, writing:
The United States has a moral responsibility to stand up for victims of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, as well as the brave individuals who take immense personal risks to expose these abuses to the world. We also have a legal responsibility to protect those who seek refuge in our country from persecution by authoritarian governments, such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
The congressman added:
In 2019, Mr. Guan – a PRC citizen – rode his motorcycle from Shanghai to Xinjiang expecting to enjoy a vacation. Instead of a scenic destination, he found himself in an obvious surveillance state. In 2020, he decided to return, determined to expose the so-called ‘re-education camps’ he had subsequently read about in an American news article. As recently reported, “[h]e spent three full days traversing the vast landscape of Xinjiang, verifying each coordinate point marked in the article as gray (low suspicion), yellow (medium suspicion), or red (high suspicion).”
His videos and photographs provided essential evidence of human rights abuses, and Mr. Guan was forced to flee his country… He has a pending asylum application, and the circumstances of his departure from the PRC are a textbook example of why asylum exists. As Mr. Guan’s mother stated, “if he gets sent back [to China], he’s really dead.”
These words, unfortunately, are not hyperbole. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) does not hesitate to imprison entire communities merely on the basis of their heritage or religion, and it similarly does not hesitate to imprison and even execute those it accuses of subverting its authority, regardless of ethnicity… I know firsthand the fate individuals like him will face if deported to China. The United States should not be complicit in the detention, torture, or worse of individuals who bravely documented the human rights abuses of the Chinese Communist Party.
The congressman is also correct when he states that:
…unfortunately, I fear Mr. Guan’s case is not an aberration. By indiscriminately targeting immigrant communities in an effort to meet aggressive deportation quotas, ICE is putting fear in the hearts of individuals who came to America to escape fear.
As conservatives, let’s take back this noble issue and press the Trump administration to be more selective in its deportation approach to allow for the righteous protection of those who truly deserve asylum, and those here, perhaps illegally, but who earned their residence through military service to our country.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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No to deportation
Yes, please release Guan Heng. He did a great service exposing the Chinese for their inhumane treatment of the Uyghurs.