ICE Pauses effort to expel Chinese dissident

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An asylum hearing in upstate New York on Monday will determine the fate of Guan Heng. The decision will also speak volumes about whether America still protects those who speak up for freedom at great risk to themselves.

Guan Heng is a 38-year-old Chinese immigrant who fled the People’s Republic after he gathered evidence of human-rights abuses against the ethnic Uyghur population in Xinjiang province. Following satellite coordinates he downloaded from Western sources, he traveled across Xinjiang to investigate the re-education camps and detention sites that China says don’t exist.

His story is an astonishing credit to Guan Heng’s desire to live in freedom, as recounted in an article by Lu Jingwei in Human Rights in China on Substack on which this editorial is based. As a young man in Henan province, Guan Heng found a way to evade Chinese internet censors and access foreign news. He was fascinated in particular by satellite photos of alleged concentration camps in Xinjiang, and he decided to see for himself.

It’s hard to imagine a riskier trek, but he managed to pull it off, traveling through cities and towns with a telephoto lens. He returned home but knew that if he disclosed the photos online from inside China, he would be discovered and arrested.

He decided to leave China—through Hong Kong, traveling first to Ecuador, then the Bahamas, where he bought a boat and sailed without sailing experience toward Florida. On the coast he abandoned the boat, made his way into the U.S. and released his photos that went viral on the internet and validated what the satellite photos had highlighted.

According to Mr. Lu, Guan Heng sought asylum in New York on Oct. 25, 2021, received a work permit, and began to make a living as an Uber driver in New York City, among other jobs. He settled in a town near Albany this spring and shared a house with a Chinese couple, quietly making a living.

Then heroism became tragedy. Guan Heng’s supporters say U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided the house in August looking for the couple. They arrested Guan Heng when he acknowledged that he had entered the country illegally. Mr. Lu reports that ICE didn’t recognize Guan Heng’s work permit and pursuit of asylum because he entered the U.S. illegally. He has since spent months in detention, most recently in the Broome County Correctional Facility.

It’s hard to imagine a stronger case for asylum. The Chinese government has attacked Guan Heng relentlessly since he was identified as the source of the Xinjiang photos. His relatives in China have been harassed and threatened. If he is deported to China, Guan Heng is sure to be arrested and sentenced to decades in prison, if not tortured.

Is this the message the land of the free wants to send the world? That if you risk your life to expose human-rights abuses, and then risk it again to make it to America, the home of the brave will serve as the police force for the Chinese Communist Party?

It’s hard to believe, but then you never know in this era of mass deportation that has disrupted lives and broken up so many law-abiding families. Let’s hope that Mr. Guan is granted asylum to live freely in his adopted country that was once, and must continue to be, a beacon for liberty.

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