Racial Profiling

2018/12/07 FBI Meeting

On December 7, 2018, a group of community leaders met with a senior-level FBI official and representatives at the FBI headquarters to convey concerns raised within the Chinese American community about the role of bias in its investigations, among other issues. A public statement about the meeting is here: English | 中文 .

Each of the five community leaders brought his/her talking materials to the meeting with the FBI official and representatives:

Aryani Ong, community advocate
Robert Gee, Vice Chair, Washington DC Region, Committee of 100: Letter from Committee of 100
Andrew Kim, Visiting Scholar, South Texas College of Law and Litigator, Greenberg Traurig: Prosecuting Chinese “Spies:” An Empirical Analysis of The Economic Espionage Act
Steven Pei, scientist and Honorary Chair of United Chinese Americans: FBI Meeting Talking Points
Jeremy Wu, retired government official: FBI Meeting Talking Points

Additional Background

2018/12/23 Houston Chronicle: Houston Asians meet with D.C. FBI about economic espionage, racial bias
2018/10/12 Six Hues: Summary: Panel Addresses Concerns that Chinese Americans Are Targeted by Law Enforcement as U.S.-China Tensions Flare
2018/09/22 Houston Chronicle: Houstonians respond to Asian-Americans being increasingly targeted in economic espionage cases
2018/09/22 Community Educational Forum: A Dialogue with the FBI and Legal Experts: The Impact of Espionage Investigations on the Asian American Community
2018/08/26 CBS 60 Minutes: U.S. fight against Chinese espionage ensnares innocent Americans
2018/08/08 Houston Chronicle: FBI warns Texas academic and medical leaders of ‘classified’ security threats
2018/05/17 New York Times: Cleared of Spying for China, She Still Doesn’t Have Her Job Back
2018/05/05 South China Morning Post: Spying charges against Chinese-American scientists spark fears of a witch hunt
2018/03/01 Community Organizations: Joint letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray
2017/05/10 New York Times: Former Espionage Suspect Sues, Accusing F.B.I. of Falsifying Evidence
2015/09/15 New York Times: The Rush to Find China’s Moles

"Collateral Damage" and "The Spy Who Wasn't"

2018/08/26 "Collateral Damage" on Sherry Chen and Professor Xiaoxing Xi

2018/08/26 60 Minutes Overtime "The Spy Who Wasn't"

Profiling of Asian Americans

On August 26, 2018, CBS 60 Minutes rebroadcast "Collateral Damage" nationwide with updates on the stories of Sherry Chen and Professor Xiaoxing Xi. Bill Whitaker reported on these and other innocent Chinese Americans wrongly accused of espionage-related crimes as the U.S. steps up the fight against Chinese theft of U.S. trade secrets and intellectual property.

60 Minutes Overtime, titled "The Spy Who Wasn't," further describes that "[a]s innocent Chinese Americans are being accused as spies, the impact on them and their families lasts far beyond the legal fees and dropped charges."

Sherry Chen and Professor Xiaoxing Xi are not the only Asian American victims of racial discrimination in U.S. history. Collateral damage for Chinese American scientists is also not a recent occurrence by random chance.

The Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited all immigration of Chinese laborers beginning in 1882. Subsequent amendments expanded the exclusion to all Asians. It was one of the most egregious discriminatory laws based on race and national origin in U.S. history. The Chinese Exclusion Act and its amendments were not repealed until 1943, and even then, disproportionate immigration quotas were applied to Asians until 1965.

During the Second World War, about 120,000 Japanese men, women and children were interned under Executive Order 9066, about two thirds of them were native-born American citizens. Most of them were uprooted from their homes in the West Coast and sent to relocation centers for suspicion of disloyalty to the United States.

In combination with these historical and stereotypical backgrounds, the current state of profiling of Chinese Americans is further entrenched by:

Modern technology such as artifical intelligence and robotics is a major area of international competition for human talent. It also allows convenient collection of large amount of data and massive surveillance by the government beyond the traditional boundaries, eroding civil liberties and privacy of all Americans and helping to target Asian Americans.

Economic espionage and trade secrets became part of the expanded scope of national security after the 9/11 attacks. Athough no person of Chinese descent is known to have participated in acts of terrorism, Chinese Americans became subjects of surveillance and profiling as potential economic spies and insider threats.

The rapid rise of China as an economic power in the past decades and its ambitious long-term economic and military development programs have become a threat to the U.S., both real and perceived. This threat is further promoted actively by the traditional military-industrial complex and the growing cybersecurity-industrial complex.

The national security strategy issued in late 2017 officially declared China to be a competitive rival to the U.S. Implementation of the strategy has followed with intensified information campaigns and additional legislations and regulations that also enable the profiling practice, such as the "whole-of-society" approach advocated by FBI Director Christopher Wray and the Department of Justice "China Initiative" when anti-immigrant rhetorics are also rising.

Modern federal criminal laws have exploded in number and became impossibly broad and vague," according to criminal defense and civil liberties litigator Harvey Silverglate in his book titled "Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent." Without adequate transparency, oversight, and accountability, "prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any innocent individuals, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior."

In total or in part, these factors have led some innocent Asian Americans to recent persecutions as explicit targets, collateral damage, and convenient scapegoats in the name of national security. Racial profiling is legally and morally wrong.

Racial Profiling

The use of race, ethnicity or national origin as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed an offense

Mistake

An action or judgment that is misguided or wrong

Stereotype

An over-generalized belief about a particular category of people

Implicit Bias

Attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manne

Social Stigma

disapproval of, or discrimination against, a person based on perceivable social characteristics that serve to distinguish them from other members of a society

Prejudice

Harm or injury that results or may result from some action or judgment

Discrimination

The unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things

Recommended Reading

Harvey Silverglate (2011)
Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent