Commonwealth Policy Center

The FBI arrested two people in connection with a Chinese police station operating in Manhattan’s Chinatown. The police station was tied to China’s Ministry of Public Security, and its goal was to locate and pressure Chinese pro-democracy activists to return to China to face trial. This is clearly a violation of our national sovereignty. David Newman, a top official in the Justice Department’s national security division, says it well, “In America, the law protects all of us equally from persecution, violence and threats of violence as authoritarian governments — whether the People’s Republic of China, Russia, Iran, or others — become more brazen in their efforts to trample the rights and liberties that are the bedrock of our democracy.”