Inhumane treatment of civil detainees by inhuman vermin masquerading as human beings at the NWDC, but they just get what they "deserve" for being here, right?

 

Buried on page 10 of yesterday’s Seattle Times was a story on a University of Washington Center for Human Rights report on conditions at the Northwest Detention Center, the kind of place where the formerly “liberal” but increasingly right-wing Ninth Circuit Court ignores evidence of inhuman conditions at privately-run immigration detention centers. 

By law private immigration detention centers are only allowed to "hold" immigrants "guilty" of civil offenses, meaning their only “crime” is being in the country; the court's ruling in overturning a California law closing such facilities declared that states have no authority to do so, because-immigration policy is under the purview of the federal government. This seems rather “odd” view, given the Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott or any court in Florida or Texas don’t seem to think that this restriction applies to them.

The UWCHR tells us that

The Northwest Detention Center first opened on Tacoma’s tideflats in 2004, and expanded in 2006 and 2008; today, with a 1575-bed capacity, it is one of the largest immigration detention centers in the nation. The facility is owned and operated by GEO Group under a contract for ICE which guarantees to pay GEO, at minimum, to incarcerate 800 people per night. The NWDC exclusively holds people detained for ICE on suspected civil violations of immigration law.

While the City of Tacoma initially welcomed the facility, and the State of Washington helped procure financing for its construction, escalating hunger strikes, protests, and deaths inside and near the NWDC have led to growing criticism of the facility in recent years.

In its search for documentation of abuses at the Florida-based GEO-operated facility since 2017, the UWCHR notes that there had been stonewalling by the DHS for years in its FOIA requests: “The agency declined to provide the documents by claiming that their release would violate detained people’s privacy, even though we asked that all personally-identifiable information be redacted; in still others, the agency appears to have lost our request, having confirmed its initial receipt but then failing to respond to multiple communications inquiring as to its status."

A lawsuit against the DHS has, however, led to the release of some documents. The report notes that its researchers have been denied access to NWDC, so it is “it is impossible to corroborate individual claims of abuse at NWDC without access to the facility." Nevertheless, "it is imperative to take accounts of abusive conditions seriously, particularly as research has documented troubling conditions in many other facilities used for the civil detention of immigrants by both ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the United States.”

At other facilities throughout the country of which access was granted (or forced to be) to federal investigators from the DHS OIG and  obtained for perusal, "Human rights organizations, journalists, and academic researchers" were able to document "grave abuses in private and public facilities alike, including dangerously inadequate medical care;  insufficient nutrition; lack of access to showers, clean clothes, and basic hygiene items including soap or toothbrushes; physical abuse, including sexual abuse, of detained people; and other concerns.” 

And it isn’t just “Mexicans” who have been subjected to inhuman conditions, but Ukrainians who entered the country without “documents” have also reportedly complained about their treatment at the NWDC.

The DHS OIG has issued studies on the “dangerous overcrowding and prolonged detention of children” at facilities in the Rio Grande Valley, reporting “inadequate food leading to digestive and other health problems, and insufficient access to clean clothes and showers." Another OIG report after “unannounced visits to public and private facilities in California, Louisiana, New Jersey, and Colorado,” it “documented the overly restrictive use of segregation; inadequate medical care; food safety issues including—in all four facilities inspected—the serving of expired food; and lack of access to clean clothing and adequate hygiene items.”

Republican House committees charge that the Biden administration’s border policy is “criminal,” and it is—just not in the way they want the public to believe. As reported by John Oliver in one of his recent exposés, the Biden administration’s detention and asylum policy continues along Trump lines, and in some cases even worse because of the false “promises” he made to make asylum and family detention policy more “humane,” when in fact the opposite has happened, mainly because Biden caved-in to far-right xenophobia like a political coward.

However, the UWCHR report notes that despite the OIG studies, and that of “overlapping” government and health care facilities watchdog teams, these have not led to any improvement of treatment in the privately-run ICE detention facilities, all of which continue to make excuses for their inadequacies, redefining what qualifies as a "grievance," or blaming the victims when not denying there is a “problem” at all.

The UWCHR reiterates that “ICE only has authority hold people for civil violations of immigration law,” not for actual “crimes.” Many of these people mistakenly believe that they applied for asylum and are awaiting adjudication, and Hispanic asylum seekers typically have to wait much longer than other groups to have their cases even heard regardless if they happen to be from countries on the U.S. hit list, like Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua; however, the reality is that like those asylum seekers who were conned on board the DeSantis/Abbott express flights, they are only seen as subjects of abuse. 

Not surprisingly, the UWCHR notes that these facilities violate international human rights law:

Under international human rights law, civil (or administrative) detention should be a measure of last resort; it should never be punitive; and alternatives to detention should be employed whenever possible. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has criticized the United States for its use of mandatory civil detention and lack of alternatives, writing that the mandatory detention of immigrants is a “disproportionate measure in many if not the majority of cases,” and that it threatens due process.

How about this for brain fog hypocrisy:

The United States government has argued that the detention of immigrants does not require adherence to the U.S. Constitution’s due process clause because unlike criminal detention, civil detention is not supposed to be punitive. Yet the notion that the indefinite deprivation of liberty for immigrants is not punitive rests on a legal fiction. The matter was most recently raised before the U.S. Supreme Court in Jennings v. Rodriguez in 2018, although the court did not rule on this specific question, sending it back to lower courts to decide. As the ACLU wrote at the time, “Nowhere else in the U.S. legal system do we let the government take people’s freedom away for months or years without a hearing before a judge who determines whether their incarceration is necessary.”

Further, “Under international human rights standards which are also echoed in U.S. law, all detained people have the right to be detained in conditions that are safe and respectful of their dignity.” However, the report is rather “exhaustive” in its illumination that the opposite is occurring at the NWDC, which you can find here https://jsis.washington.edu but I’ll mention some of the “highlights” here, based on “3240 pages of written grievances filed by people detained at the NWDC,” otherwise known by the sinister-sounding “Northwest ICE Processing Center.” While I didn’t see his name mentioned in the report, the NWDC was open for "business" during the time this Heinrich Himmler-lookalike, Marc J. Moore…

 

…was the acting head of the Seattle ICE deportation office, on his way to Dallas from Miami, where he was deemed a "liability" because of inhuman abuses of asylum seekers, some of whom were shackled up and herded like cattle on board planes out of the country. The person who took over permanently in that position, Nathalie Asher, served for a time as a director of the NWDC, and of course as a woman she is given the "benefit of the doubt" about the abuses that occurred there during her tenure.

I mention this because of the absolute hypocrisy of Moore and this country; on the ICE website, it brags about its “respect for human rights” when Moore (in his post in Miami) oversaw the deportation of a former soldier in the El Salvadoran army, Jose Francisco Grijalva Monroy, who admitted “that as a soldier in the Salvadoran army, he tortured suspected guerrillas by hanging them by their hands from trees and slapping their chests with his bare hands. Monroy also admitted that he tied suspected guerrillas to the back of an army Jeep and dragged them on the road until their skin came off.” 

The problem, of course, was that the Reagan and first Bush administrations were funding and arming right-wing murder regimes in Central America, and knew full well that this kind of thing was going on,  but overlooked these abuses if it was “necessary” to keep the “communists” out. 

Moving on, we learn that there were “complaints about sanitation at the NWDC, principally in the laundry and kitchen facilities. Detained people repeatedly reported that food was either spoiled or uncooked, sometimes infested with worms. They also noted that clothing was washed improperly, leaving them forced to wear clothes that smelled bad or were stained, including underwear.” 

We should note that for GEO this was a "for profit" operation, so we shouldn't be "surprised" by how much they "cut corners." That included "saving" time, water and soap; witnesses noted that clothing was sometimes washed in the same loads with dirty mop heads, and sometimes even without laundry soap.

Such complaints meant nothing: “Despite ample evidence of abuses at the facility, the privately-run NWDC operates with no meaningful oversight from the federal, state, or local governments. Unfortunately, we conclude that there is little reason to believe that is amenable to change.” The report notes that complaints by detainees within the facility were simply tossed from one person to the next like a hot potato before it ended up in the trash:

Furthermore, responses by staff reviewing grievances—a combination of ICE and GEO officers, though on individual grievance forms it is not always clear which institution is issuing the response—show that these concerns are often dismissed by the facility, which either deems them “not a grievance” or suggests the detained person must approach the other institution (ICE or GEO) for resolution. While concerns about being forced to wear another person’s dirty underwear or eat food containing maggots are clear violations of detained peoples’ rights to conditions of confinement that respect their human dignity, they also suggest a systematic disregard for the public health implications of detention.

A Russian detainee complained that “The facility’s laundry does a horrible job and my… clothes come back brown-reddish color and smell[ing] rotten.” Despite the fact it is an “ICE Processing Center” and ICE holds ultimate responsibility for what goes on there, they simply tossed the problem to someone else: “You need to file a grievance with the GEO laundry staff; as I explained before, ICE does not manage the daily operations of the facility, including the laundry room.” 

What was the response from GEO? “I have talked to the laundry officer and they have not mixed or washed mop heads with the clothes.” A Filipino detainee reported that “‘I was given some filthy underwear that I couldn’t and wouldn’t want to keep.’ The response from GEO was ‘Not a grievance.’”

In regard to medical care,

Detained people at NWDC routinely report that when seeking access to medical care, their concerns are ignored, either because GEO guards deny them permission to visit the medical clinic or, more frequently, because in the clinic, the medical staff belittles their concerns. Many people report that those who experience illness and seek treatment at the NWDC clinic are simply told to drink water, or occasionally given over-the-counter pain medications, without any serious analysis of their health needs. This pattern of dismissals of patient concerns is also reflected in investigative reports on conditions in other ICE facilities nationwide.

Typically, facility staff refer those who complain that they have been denied care to the clinic’s daily “sick call” at 5:30 am, in most cases not addressing the fact that the grievance itself describes at least one prior visit to the clinic in which the patient was unsatisfied with the care received; simply sending them back for more of the same seems unresponsive to their concerns. Indeed, grievances were almost universally labeled “not a grievance.” Occasionally, facility staff deflect concerns by insisting, on GEO grievances, that the issues should be raised with ICE, and on ICE grievances, that they should be raised with GEO.

Inhuman behavior by medical providers was rampant:

Today at 11 am I went to a medical appointment where I saw Dr. [Name redacted]. He started asking me questions about my medical history. One was if my mother was still alive, and I answered him yes, after I answered him yes he told me that your mom’s biggest mistake was having you as a daughter. Then he asked me if I had children and I answered yes, I have 4, then he told me that was my kids’ biggest mistake having me as a mother. I don’t understand why he told me these things, he really did hurt me, as soon as I got back to my pod I started crying for what he told me, it’s hard enough being here and away from family and then just for a stranger to tell me all these things it’s just not fair.”

And another incident which underlines the kind of people that ICE thinks have the right “attitude” for the job:

I was seen by Nurse [name redacted]. She took me into an interviewing room to ask me questions about my medical. She asked me how I was feeling and I stated to her that I was in pain, my back, joints, and kidney, she asked how do I know that. I told her because I know, that’s why I am here. She stated, “You are here because you are here illegally.” That’s when I told her that I didn’t want to talk or be seen by her.

Human Rights Watch noted that “On the basis of reviews of medical records of a dozen other detained individuals...there is systemic substandard and dangerous medical practices." A whistleblower working for the ICE Health Service Corps (IHSC)  denounced “numerous preventable deaths in ICE custody, including cases where mentally ill patients were administered inappropriate or negligent care that culminated in their suicides; the same memo noted that ICE personnel never reviewed notifications that should have alerted them to a problem.” Another whistleblower accused “ICE employees of simply ignoring quality control mechanisms intended to provide oversight," and the NWDC was a noted perpetrator.

The report noted that there is “unprecedented numbers of detained people dying in ICE custody" and "there is already abundant evidence of systemic problems in ICE’s Health Service Corps. Yet DHS, ICE, and GEO are the only parties able to access the medical records necessary to conduct any deeper analysis—and they are insufficiently committed to transparency to do so in a credible way." 

It also notes that solitary confinement is used more often and for longer periods at the NWDC than at other ICE facilities, not just for those who have mental health issues, but those who “exercise their First Amendment rights” by complaining too much about the conditions at the facility.

The report continues:

UWCHR researchers reviewed ICE’s internal documentation of 70 use of force incidents at the Northwest Detention Center during a period of 7 years, 5 months between 2015 and 2023. Under the PBNDS, facility personnel are required to “prepare detailed documentation of all incidents involving use of force, including chemical agents”; the original report must be submitted prior to the conclusion of the shift during which the use of force took place.

The ICE documents reviewed describe these use of force incidents as ranging in nature from the spontaneous use of physical force to break up fights, to the deployment of chemical agents to obligate detained people to “follow officer orders,” to the force-feeding of a hunger striker. Uses of force are particularly likely to occur during “cell extractions,” or the forced moving of a resistant person from one cell to another; this occurs most frequently in the Restricted Housing Unit. Particularly in the Restricted Housing Unit, there are multiple cases of repeated, escalating uses of force against the same individual, sometimes on the same day; the most extreme of these involve a single man who experienced 13 use of force incidents over a three-month period in 2019.

Now, before you say “well, if these people just did what they were told, this wouldn't happen” let’s remember that the only “crime” these people committed is that in most cases they entered the country seeking asylum, which explains why they are subject to lengthy detentions and not simply immediately deported. 

Hunger strikes are constitutionally-protected free speech, but the ICE only sees these efforts as a way to "embarrass" the agency and possibly even promote public "interest" in what is going on, and support changes in the way these detention centers operate. After all, these people have a right to be angered by the abuses they suffer as human beings at facilities like the NWDC, and the fact their detention and conditions at such facilities violates international human rights laws.

There is a lot more to the UWHRC report, but you get the gist of it; that this report wasn’t anywhere near the front page of the Times suggests to me that the editors don’t believe that readers (and there are not too many of those of print newspapers) are either not too concerned or even interested in what happens to people who “don’t belong here,” even when many of them are not “Mexicans” but Asian, black and even European (one complainer in the report was a UK citizen), although likely most stereotype every Hispanic they see as someone who “doesn’t belong” and is less than human on their “cultural” and social strata terms—so whatever they endure at these detention is no more than what they “deserve.”

Nothing is likely to change at NWDC as long as its activities are insulated from public discourse, which is aided by the toxic atmosphere generated by nativism, paranoia and the search for scapegoats. The prevailing attitude, as expressed by a resident of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, JaeLynn Mackalonis, after the kicking and beating death of Luis Ramirez in 2008 by white high school students: "It wasn't a racial crime. If he wasn't here illegally, I think it wouldn't have happened.” 

The world in a brain fog

 

We are told that, at least in the state of Washington, health officials predict a rise in Covid cases from another variant called “Eris.” Not that either health officials or the population in general is taking it too seriously, yet. After all, it is just another “gift” the world has been given by the Chinese, but at least this time they have to take some of their own medicine. We don’t really know how many people are infected in this country or elsewhere; who “tests” for colds or flus anyways? You just “know” you have it.

I got my two shots initially, but I suspect I did contract the Omicron—legs feeling weak, fuzzy reading vision and a tension headache that just wouldn’t quit unless I slept for 16 hours. We are told by the NHS that many people suffer “brain fog” for a short or a long time as an aftereffect: “poor concentration, feeling confused, thinking more slowly than usual, fuzzy thoughts, forgetfulness, lost words and mental fatigue.” I have to admit that some of those describe me these days. I am one of those people who has to put their keys in a place where they know they will find them without having to think about where they put them.

But for some people, “brain fog” occurs naturally, such as afflicted the person who posited this question on Quora:

This person is probably not unlike a man who thought he had me figured out as I was leaving a convenience store with a cup of coffee in one hand and my phone in the other. I was completely immersed in my own business, but this guy kept beeping his car, once, twice, three times—apparently to get my “attention.” I finally turned toward where the noise was coming from to take a look at this jerk with a long beard “fashionable” among “Nordic” types, and observed that he apparently had been staring after me the whole time waiting for me to turn around. He beeped the car again to make his “point”: that he was just some ignorant Nazi moron trying to shoe-horn me into his paranoid, stereotypical white nationalist worldview.

Unfortunately, brain fog also is present with some people who can’t help but to make “contributions” to other people’s stereotypes, thanks to the “culture” that enabled it. I'm not going to leave Hispanics out of this time. Full-blood indigenous people may occupy the lowest rung on the social ladder in Latin American countries, but in my opinion are the least deserving of prejudice in this country, as they by nature labor without complaint. On the other hand (and of course I'm guilty of generalization saying this) while “Euro-elites” are just full of shit, I try not to get into “discussions” with “mestizo” males because if offended they try to demean your “manhood” with stupid sexual inferences that are both juvenile and stereotype-confirming.

The women, on the other hand, are sometimes divas and drama queens, although not the kind that necessarily devolve into violence as on that ridiculous The Creep Squad show which really does show you how hip-hop “culture” should be left in the “family” and not be a bother to the rest of us. I remember a conversation with a Hispanic former co-worker who whined and wailed about her hips hurting, and she had just put in her two-week notice. What? Why don’t you see a doctor, I asked. She moaned about how she would be fired if she missed work. Who told you that, I asked. You have medical insurance, why not use it? You are not going to be fired if you have to see a doctor, and you’ve got sick pay. 

I don’t who she was talking to before, probably to other drama queens with their sob stories whining about how unfair the world is to them. Unfortunately she talked to a sensible person too late, because the supervisor told me later she had pulled this stunt before, and this time she wasn’t going to be “rehired.”

Meanwhile “brain fog” seems to afflict both accusers and the mainstream media in the metal band Rammstein case in Germany. The latest is an accusation against band member “Flake,” by a woman who claims that “something” must have happened to her after she allegedly went to bed with him, because she woke up with a sore tummy. The “accuser” claims she has had sex lots of times and doesn’t remember having a sore tummy before. 

People actually take this as a “serious” accusation? At least the German news agency DW is forced to admit that the accused can ignore the handful of annoying loudmouths who gather to protest at sold-out concerts, because unlike in the U.S., in Germany one is presumed innocent until proven guilty, and “Flake” and Till Lindemann haven’t been charged with anything, officially.

And why should they be? None of the accusations thus far amount to a “crime.” A few women who were invited to the band’s after show parties claim that they what?—didn’t “consent” to be one who might be asked if they wanted to have a roll with Lindemann? What the hell does that mean? Even those who claimed they were personally approached and said “no” admitted that they were not pursued further. Now it is a “crime” to even inquire for “consent”? If something isn’t a “crime” under the previous “standard,” then the media just moves the posts so it is a “crime.” In matters of right or wrong, it is just make things up as you go along time.

The person who started all of this, I believe her name is Shelby, is by the video and witness evidence a spaced-out attention-seeker who apparently was offended when Lindemann told her to take a hike. On social media, she acts like an immature teenager for whom even the suggestion of “sex” is something “yucky.” And because the mainstream media actually took this idiot seriously, other women came out of the woodwork looking for the own 15 minutes of infamy with similar stories of feeling “devalued.” 

It is speculated that it was a gang of radical feminists who broke into Lindemann’s home recently and trashed it; personally, I don’t view these fanatics as legitimate members of any political philosophy any more than are far-right extremists: they are merely offered “shelter” in whatever political party needs their votes.

But probably no one is more lost in brain fog than Amber Heard supporters, and that includes the mainstream media generally, and for the present Netflix in particular, which has an upcoming “documentary” on the Depp-Heard trial that will “recontextualize” the trial, meaning the “misogyny” behind the social media’s examination of Heard’s lies and fake evidence. It demands that we shed "tears" for Heard, when in fact this vindictive fraud deserves none at all.

Numerous YouTubers who followed the case since Heard first concocted with the help of the ACLU that Washington Post op-ed, and whose suspicions of Heard’s stories were confirmed by those audios that Heard shills simply refuse to either acknowledge the importance of, will be under a full-frontal attack by filmmakers who have promoted Heard’s side of the case for years without a shred of doubt, even after the verdict that found that Heard had defamed Depp with actual malice on all three counts.

There doesn't seem to be anything “new” in this "documentary"; it is just pushing the same tired line the mainstream media has tried and failed to push for years, which underlines its own failure to sway public opinion. The MSM in its gender-biased arrogance never anticipated the possibility of Depp winning the case and Heard being found guilty; people naturally wanted to know why, and this kind of thing doesn't illuminate anything but the MSM's desperate effort to "redeem" it's lost credibility. 

So far the MSM continues to avoid examining the reasons why a jury would find, based on the evidence presented, that Heard had defamed JD with actual malice. There is no effort to examine why people wouldn’t trust the mainstream media that won't tell them the truth, giving them no choice but to look for it elsewhere. The MSM got it wrong, and now they want to discredit those who got it right? Not going to work. Besides, who decided that women are always the victims and never the victimizers anyways? It's an issue of power, and how it is used and abused.

And I tell you something else: it doesn't take any "courage" to jump on bandwagons, as many people did in the Depp case. Exposing injustice in unpopular cases is the true measure of your commitment to justice, as demonstrated by Colonel Kurtz in the Marilyn Manson case, and Frank Valchiria in the Andrew Tate case.

So far, there is just this Law & Crime overview of the trial which billed itself as the “only unbiased” examination of the Virginia trial...

 

...that fittingly ends with Heard’s infamous words on audio, laughing at the notion that anyone would believe that Depp was the victim of domestic violence. We live in a society where “loss and insecurity” among males is blamed on their own “psychological issues”—and not on a “cancel culture” society where their every move seemingly is “scrutinized” and punished if deemed "hurtful" by women. 

Of course we have to come to grips with the fact that “brain fog” could happen on a national scale. The belief in a “stolen” election which led to the January 6 insurrection for example, although attempts to lift the fog now include the indictment of Trump and 18 others in Georgia for conspiracy to overturn the election. Meanwhile, in Florida voters have been inflicted with brain fog on a massive scale, where people have literally chosen, by voting for far-right "culture war" politicians, to allow the passage of laws to take away their right to have a right, just as the Germans did in giving the Nazis control of thought and action.

Thus we see fascist governor Ron DeSantis exercising his authoritarian powers in denying the freedom of thought and action in Florida. In the case of Andrew Warren, who DeSantis fired from his elected position of state prosecutor last year after signing a statement supporting abortion rights, the Brennan Center for Justice deemed the action “a wholesale disrespect for democracy” and reflected “a basic misunderstanding of the prosecutor’s role and improperly interfere with prosecutorial discretion and independence.”

The Florida State Supreme Court, which one local newspaper called the far-right’s “court of its dreams,” refused to hear the case in order to reinstate Warren despite a federal court ruling that Warren's freedom of speech rights were violated. DeSantis took this as permission to engaged in another political stunt last week against the Orlando prosecutor’s right of discretion by “suspending” her simply because her beliefs conflicted with his own far-right philosophy.

I wonder how Covid “brain fog” effects people already with it in its “natural” form like this. We have seen cases where people actually died after insisting it wasn’t “real.” It would be nice to believe this is all a nightmare we just hope people will wake up from, but as we see so often, certain people prefer a nightmare fog world as long as they believe it is only others who are harmed by it. But such people living in even a "religious" fog should take note of what Thomas More said in The Man For All Seasons:

“Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”

Regardless of the actual number of Chinese residents of questionable "loyalty" to this country, the impact of their espionage and technology theft is huge

 

It seems like every consumer product that is not produce or an automobile has a “Made in China” label on—I remember when people used to “joke” about “Made in Japan”—and this might not merely be how the “free market” has shaken out, but deliberate policy to weaken U.S. and Western economies. CNBC reported last month that “For years, corporate America largely saw theft by the Chinese government and state-run companies as an attempt to catch up with advanced U.S. technology. But officials now say the effort is more nefarious than generally understood, viewing — in many cases — an adversary that wants to eliminate the American companies they are targeting, not just narrow the gap between Chinese firms and their U.S. competition.”

It has become increasingly clear that China has flouted international norms of behavior and cooperation for the single-minded purpose of nationalistic narcissism. In his book “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order,” Rush Doshi opines that

Politically, Beijing would project leadership over global governance and international institutions, split Western alliances, and advance autocratic norms at the expense of liberal ones. Economically, it would weaken the financial advantages that underwrite US hegemony and seize the commanding heights of the “fourth industrial revolution” from artificial intelligence to quantum computing, with the United States declining into a “deindustrialized, English-speaking version of a Latin American republic, specializing in commodities, real estate, tourism, and perhaps transnational tax evasion.”⁸ Militarily, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would field a world-class force with bases around the world that could defend China’s interests in most regions and even in new domains like space, the poles, and the deep sea. The fact that aspects of this vision are visible in high-level speeches is strong evidence that China’s ambitions are not limited to Taiwan or to dominating the Indo-Pacific. The “struggle for mastery,” once confined to Asia, is now over the global order and its future. If there are two paths to hegemony—a regional one and a global one—China is now pursuing both.

A lot of people in this country still seem to believe that the Chinese presence in this country is “benign,” and welcome its “investment”—or buying outright American companies, making them no longer “American.” Of course it is wrong to presume that “all” people of Chinese origin residing in this country have less than “patriotic” motivations for being here. Unfortunately, it is a question increasingly of “patriotism” for what country. FBI director Christopher Wray said in a recent interview that China is becoming more brazen in its espionage activities in recent years, with the FBI opening a new investigation every 12 hours. Of course the U.S. also has its own spying activities going, with the difference being that it is easier to spy on an “open” society like the U.S. as opposed to a closed one like China’s.

China’s intelligence operations can also seem to be “benign” at first look, like cheap cell phone networks for rural areas that happen to be near nuclear missile sites or other military installations. Or it could be the purchase of land near military installations or U.S. government buildings without obvious commercial purpose. 

In 2017, China offered to build an “ornate” garden in the National Arboretum in Washington D.C., which was at first greeted with enthusiasm—until it was discovered that its proposed location was perfectly suited for espionage activities, with building materials to be shipped from China in “diplomatic pouches” which U.S. customs is barred from inspecting.

The FBI has a special webpage here https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence/the-china-threat that links to stories on the Department of Justice’s public affairs webpage on Chinese espionage which is shockingly lengthy. Just a handful of  reports shows that it isn’t always an easy matter to determine the difference between “friend” and “foe,” since many of the people engaged in espionage and technology theft are technically U.S. citizens of Chinese heritage or birth.

The most recent case involves two U.S. Navy sailors “accused of having passed along national defense information to Chinese intelligence officials in return for cash payments…Jinchao "Patrick" Wei, a 22-year-old petty officer 2nd class, was arrested Wednesday and charged with espionage -- more specifically, conspiracy to and committing the communication of defense information to aid a foreign government…Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao, of Monterey Park, California, was also arrested Wednesday, by FBI and NCIS agents, and is charged with conspiracy and receipt of a bribe by a public official, officials said, according to Zhao's indictment.”

We are told that Wei’s mother actually encouraged her son to do espionage work against the U.S., in the belief that he might be offered a high-level position in the Chinese government. Wei was born in China and only became a U.S. citizen last year, so we can see there was an apparent “confusion” about where his “patriotism” lie. There has been no indication that Wei’s mother will be arrested for espionage, although we may suspect she was his “handler” in more ways than one.

In other recent cases, in January 2021 Gang Chen “A professor and researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was charged and arrested today in connection with failing to disclose contracts, appointments and awards from various entities in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to the U.S. Department of Energy." Why would he be trying to hide this information? To gain access to technology secrets that he could transfer to his Chinese government handlers?

In February 2021, 

Li Chen, “A former Dublin, Ohio woman was sentenced in U.S. District Court today to 30 months in prison for conspiring to steal exosome-related trade secrets concerning the research, identification and treatment of a range of pediatric medical conditions…Chen and her husband, co-conspirator Yu Zhou, 50, worked in separate medical research labs at the Research Institute for 10 years each (Zhou from 2007 until 2017 and Chen from 2008 until 2018). They pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal at least five trade secrets related to exosome research from Nationwide Children’s Hospital… Court documents detail that Chen conspired to steal and then monetize one of the trade secrets by creating and selling exosome “isolation kits.” Chen started a company in China to sell the kits.”

In May 2020, Song Guo Zheng, “A rheumatology professor and researcher with strong ties to China was sentenced to 37 months in prison for making false statements to federal authorities as part of an immunology research fraud scheme.” Zheng was arrested as he was attempting to escape by plane in Alaska. “When he was arrested, Zheng was carrying three large bags, one small suitcase and a briefcase containing two laptops, three cell phones, several USB drives, several silver bars, expired Chinese passports for his family, deeds for property in China and other items.”

In June 2021, came another arrest:

 As a senior NASA scientist with access to sensitive and confidential U.S. government technologies and intellectual property, Meyya Meyyappan was understandably subject to restrictions regarding outside employment and compensation.  When questioned by the FBI and NASA, Meyyappan gave false statements regarding his employment by a Chinese government-funded program that recruited individuals with access to foreign technologies and intellectual property. The privilege of access to cutting edge U.S. technologies and intellectual property comes with the critical responsibility of protecting their secrecy. Meyyappan betrayed that trust, by failing to disclose his foreign activities and then compounding his mistakes by lying to the FBI and NASA.  He has now been sentenced to time in federal prison for his unlawful conduct.

In January 2022, “Lucy Xi, 44, formerly a resident of Malvern, PA, pleaded guilty to stealing trade secrets from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to benefit a Chinese pharmaceutical company named Renopharma. Lucy Xi’s co-defendants, Yu Xue, Tao Li and Yan Mei, established Renopharma supposedly to research and develop anti-cancer drugs. In reality, though, the company was used as a repository of information stolen from GSK. Renopharma received financial support and subsidies from the government of China.”

Also in January 2022, “Xiang Haitao, 44, a Chinese national formerly residing in Chesterfield, Missouri, pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to commit economic espionage. According to court documents, Xiang conspired to steal a trade secret from Monsanto, an international company based in St. Louis, for the purpose of benefitting a foreign government, namely the People’s Republic of China.

January 2022 was a "busy" month: Simon Saw-Teong Ang, "An Arkansas man and University of Arkansas Professor pleaded guilty today to one count of making a false statement to the FBI about the existence of patents for his inventions in the People’s Republic of China (PRC)." The next question is whether he is a professional stealer of other people's patents.

In February 2022,

A telecommunications company conspired with former employees of Chicago-based Motorola Solutions Inc. to steal digital mobile radio technology developed by Motorola, according to an indictment unsealed today in federal court in Chicago. According to the indictment, Motorola Solutions developed the DMR technology through years of research and design.  Motorola Solutions marketed and sold the radios, which are sometimes referred to as “walkie-talkies,” in the United States and elsewhere.  The indictment alleges that China-based HYTERA COMMUNICATIONS CORP. LTD. recruited and hired Motorola Solutions employees and directed them to take proprietary and trade secret information from Motorola without authorization.  The charges allege that while still employed at Motorola, some of the employees allegedly accessed the trade secret information from Motorola’s internal database and sent multiple emails describing their intentions to use the technology at Hytera.

In September 2022, “Peter Kisang Kim, a former Broadcom Inc. engineer, was sentenced  to eight months in prison for trade secret theft involving Broadcom trade secrets…in the days before he left Broadcom, Kim copied more than 500 Broadcom files from its document repository system.  In pleading to trade secret theft, he admitted to possessing Broadcom trade secrets related to the Trident family of chips, including those contained in test plans, design verification environment files, and design specifications.”

In May 2022, 

Chenyan Wu and Lianchun Chen, a married couple who worked as research scientists for a major American pharmaceutical company, pleaded guilty in federal court today to criminal charges stemming from their efforts to gather confidential mRNA research from that company to advance the husband’s competing laboratory research in China…According to her plea agreement, from as early as November 2013, through at least June 2018, Chen repeatedly accessed Company A computers and copied confidential Company A materials. She knew she was not allowed to copy these materials, much less provide them to an individual outside the company. Chen emailed those confidential Company A materials to her husband in China over her personal Hotmail account.”

Wu, having apparently "created" the technology on his "own" in China, then

In February 2021, "Wu shut down TheraMab in China and attempted to move his laboratory to the United States.  He packed up its contents into five suitcases…Upon entry into the United States, Wu filled out a U.S. Customs form. He did not declare any biological or chemical items on the form, nor did he declare these items in person to the Customs officer while going through Customs Inspection…Initial inspection revealed about 700 to 1,000 unlabeled centrifuge tubes, which appeared to contain proteins and multiple containers of lab chemicals…one bottle contained a warning photo with the skull and crossbones image and the words 'harmful if swallowed … toxic if inhaled.'  Another bottle contained the warning statements 'fatal if inhaled … harmful if swallowed.' Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials seized all five suitcases."

Besides technology theft, the Chinese government and its intelligence apparatus have been charged with setting up illegal “secret police” offices in the U.S. to harass, detain or forcibly “repatriate” dissidents or those who otherwise have expressed views not looked upon favorably by the PRC. The police  operating from these illegal offices predictably do not report themselves as agents of a foreign government, as required. This is all part of a Chinese government campaign called “Operation Fox Hunt,” which operates around the world hunting down “fugitives.” 

And, lest we "forget," China is the world's principle source of fentanyl and/or its constituent ingredients which are used to manufacture the drug in other countries.  Should we be "surprised" to learn that Wuhan is considered the "epicenter" of Chinese fentanyl production?

As noted, it isn’t an obvious thing to know who is “loyal” to whom when it comes to the Chinese presence, let alone that involving Chinese nationals or recent "legal residents." The numbers involved in espionage and technology theft may be "small," but their impact on the country is potentially huge and devastating to the long-term "survival" of this country.

After all, we shouldn't see China as merely a “competitor” anymore; it intends on being the only “super power” in a world which bends before it on its knees through economic coercion. Why should we be making it easier for them to do that—and that includes voting for nutcases in government and allowing a violent mob to try to overturn an election, which China sees as weakness? How can we know what the enemy is when we have far-right types trying to claw people's eyes out so they are blind to that future?