Attorneys are asking US President Joe Biden’s administration to release from immigration custody a Chinese democracy advocate who could be deported to his homeland to face what they say are false charges — despite the lack of an extradition treaty between the US and China.
Human rights advocates say that this is one of a handful of cases in which China has used the Interpol “red notice” system to try to force the return of fugitives from the US Under this system, a member country of the international police consortium can ask other countries to arrest and return fugitives living abroad.
The man was arrested last month and is being held in a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center.
Photo: Reuters
The Associated Press is withholding the man’s name because a sibling still living in China has reported being threatened by government agents with criminal charges unless his brother returns to the country.
ICE said it arrested him for overstaying his visa after entering the country in September last year, and has not commented on whether the Chinese charges led to his detention.
The man’s attorneys said China is exploiting the US immigration system to bypass US efforts to fight Beijing’s targeting of dissidents. The man and his immediate family are seeking asylum in the US.
A red notice issued in January accused the man of being the ringleader of a conspiracy to make illegal profits through a mining business and recruit former prisoners to attack a supposed enemy.
The man’s advocates said that other documents from China’s legal system show that he is being framed for crimes that have already been linked to others.
“There are countries that abuse the Interpol red notice system, especially including China,” said John Sandweg, one of the man’s attorneys.
Sandweg, a former acting director of ICE, said that the agency risked being manipulated by red notices and becoming “a tool to continue the persecution of law abiding activists and dissidents.”
ICE did not directly answer a question about whether it arrested the man because of the red notice or how this would affect his case.
The man served as a village chief when Chinese authorities sought to seize a friend’s home for a planned industrial park, his attorneys said.
The man said that he allowed villagers to protest peacefully and helped the friend protest the central government directly.
He was jailed for 30 days in retaliation and eventually fled with his family to Hong Kong, where he joined in the territory’s protests amid Beijing’s efforts to tighten control, he said.
Fearing that he would be arrested again, he said that he and his family entered the US last year on a visa that gave them six months’ legal permission.
“What ICE doesn’t understand well is that [an] Interpol red notice from China is highly political and not a reliable indicator for real criminal activities,” said Yaqiu Wang (王亞秋), a China researcher at Human Rights Watch.
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