ICE arrests human rights lawyer who fled Chinese crackdown | ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement)

The detention of a Chinese human rights lawyer by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has raised concerns that he could be deported to China where he would face persecution.

Wu Shaoping fled China at the end of 2019 due to a crackdown on human rights lawyers. He went to the US on a tourist visa and applied for asylum in 2020, still awaiting a decision.

In the US, he found work as an Amazon delivery boy, remaining active in China’s embattled human rights community.

On Wednesday, Wu was stopped by ICE officers while delivering a package in Mount Holly Springs, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.

ICE officers asked Wu to provide proof of his citizenship, according to a statement relayed through his friend Shi Minglei, who spoke to him while he was in custody on Thursday. Wu presented proof of his pending asylum application and declared that he had entered the country legally.

But ICE agents arrested him and took him to a detention facility in Pennsylvania. The facility and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to an immediate request for comment outside of U.S. business hours.

Human rights groups also expressed concern about Chinese investigative journalist Bai Zhaodong, who was detained in Thailand. China’s foreign ministry confirmed to Reuters this week that China had requested extradition for Bai and said Bai was suspected of extortion and bribery by a non-public official.

Wu began his career as a commercial lawyer but later became involved in human rights circles in the 2010s with the emergence of a loose collective of academics, lawyers, and activists interested in political and legal reforms.

He took on sensitive cases involving religious minorities and political opponents, the kind of work that resulted in many lawyers being disbarred or harassed.

“He hoped that the Chinese people could enjoy freedom and democracy, and he did not like the way China’s authoritarian system oppressed ordinary people,” said Wu’s wife, Li Caoliu, who lives with him in the United States.

In December 2019, Wu attended a meeting of human rights defenders in the southern city of Xiamen. Several participants, including Ding Jiaxi and Xu Zhiyong, China’s most prominent human rights lawyers, were subsequently arrested in a massive crackdown. They remain in prison for the crime of subverting state power.

Wu fled China shortly after this meeting.

Zhou Fengsuo, a leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests who is now in the United States, said Wu’s arrest created “great fear among many of my friends who fled the Chinese Communist Party to seek some kind of protection in the United States.”

Speaking to Wu in detention, Shi said his friend was “optimistic” about his asylum claim, but added: “He is also disappointed because he thinks he should not have been detained.” Wu’s immigration hearing is scheduled for July 27, according to the New York Times.

Shi said it would be “terrible” if Wu were sent back to China and he would risk being imprisoned there. Shi’s husband, Cheng Yuan, was sentenced to five years in prison in China for his activism.

This month, Wu spoke at an event commemorating the national crackdown on Chinese human rights lawyers in July 2015. “To the outside world, human rights lawyers may seem like a bunch of tragic and heroic idealists,” he said. “However, for us this is not a romantic or performance-based act, it is an inevitable duty and responsibility. Speaking here today is not only for me, but also for my fellow lawyers who remain behind bars and silenced.”

Additional research by Yu-chen Li