Attempts to Revive China Initiative

Return to The China Initiative or Racial Profiling

Table of Contents

2022/03/17 Community Town Hall: The End of The "China Initiative"

2025/01/30 Senator Jim Risch: Every Chinese Student is An Agent of the CCP

2025/02/21 Reintroduction of Bills to Reinstate China Initiative

2025/03/12 Webinar: The China Initiative: Policy, Practice, and the Asian American Critique

2025/03/21 Webinar: Fighting Racial Profiling and The Criminalization of Academia in North America

2025/04/08 Visa Terminations, Trump Reversal, and New ICE Policy

Continuing Developments

2022/03/17 Community Town Hall: The End of The "China Initiative"

Although it was announced by the Department of Justice that the China Initiative ended on February 23, 2022, there have been continuing attempts to revive it.

On March 17, 2022, a Community Town Hall was held to discuss the end of the China Initiative.  The open forum was not recorded.

APA Justice issued a statement that said in part:

“Ending the “China Initiative” is a promising start to correct the harms caused by the initiative, apply lessons learned, and rebuild community trust and confidence that were lost in our law enforcement and judicial system. 

“But we emphasize that this is just a start.

“We, like many other organizations and individuals, have broad concerns that the end of the initiative is just in name but does not reflect a change in fact and substance.”

Return to Table of Contents

2025/01/30 Senator Jim Risch: Every Chinese Student is An Agent of the CCP

During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on January 30, 2025, Committee Chair Senator Jim Risch made statement that “each [Chinese student], whether they like it or not, is an agent of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Return to Table of Contents

2025/02/21 Reintroduction of Bills to Reinstate China Initiative

On February 21, 2025, Senator Rick Scott announced the reintroduction of his Protect America’s Innovation and Economic Security from CCP Act to reinstate and codify President Trump’s CCP Initiative under the Department of Justice (DOJ).

On the same day, Rep. Lance Gooden reintroduced a companion bill in the House.

Return to Table of Contents

2025/03/12 Webinar: The China Initiative: Policy, Practice, and the Asian American Critique

On March 12, 2025, Michigan State University's Asian Pacific American Studies Program hosted a webinar on the China Initiative, a Trump administration program that targeted Asian American scholars and researchers for investigation and prosecution. 

The event was moderated by Dr. Kent Weaver of Michigan State University.  Professor Lok Siu of UC Berkeley and Dr. Jeremy Wu of APA Justice were featured speakers.  A Q&A session followed after their presentation.

Return to Table of Contents

2025/03/21 Webinar: Fighting Racial Profiling and The Criminalization of Academia in North America

On March 21, 2025, the Chinese Canadian Faculty Project at Simon Fraser University, Canada, invited Dr. Anming Hu for an event named Fighting Racial Profiling and the Criminalization of Academia in North America both in-person and online.

This event was one of the Chinese Canadian Faculty Project’s ongoing series of Academic Freedom, Anti-racial profiling and Labour Rights. The series is sponsored by the Labour Studies Program and the Simon Fraser University Morgan Centre for Labour Research, Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) and Canada-China Focus (CCF).

The purpose of the Chinese Canadian Faculty Project is to engage and support researchers, scholars, as well as graduate students of Chinese descent and other minority groups to fight against racial profiling and defend academic freedom in the increasingly restrictive national security measures adopted by the Canadian government through its Named Research Organizations in Sensitive Technology Research Areas, and legalized control of academic freedom under the newly passed Bill C-70, the Countering Foreign Interference Act. Through organizing open conversations, the Chinese Canadian Faculty Project hopes to foster an inclusive and open academic environment.

On the event, Dr. Hu shared his powerful story as the first academic wrongfully charged and went on trial under the China Initiative. He spoke about what he experienced, the impacts on his academic career, his life and his family. He speaks out against racial profiling, raising awareness of the dangers of overreach in national security measures targeting academia.

Immediate impact of the event: As a Chinese Canadian, Dr. Anming Hu’s story was known to the Chinese Canadian academic community. The event attracted attention nationwide in Canada. Scholars in sensitive technology areas have wide fear of racial profiling and being wrongfully treated by their own government. Therefore, university professors, scholars and students participated widely. There were more than seventy attendees across North America. The participants addressed their concerns during the panel discussion. They consulted Dr. Hu with legal concerns, and what they should do to protect themselves. Dr. Hu responded with his own experience.

Political impact: Beyond attracting academia attention, the event has also drawn interest from politicians. Senator Yuen Pau Woo participated in-person. He was concerned about whether the Canadian government provided adequate support to Dr. Hu when he encountered injustice. He asked whether the Canadian government took any action to help Dr. Hu during his investigation and trial. Did any Canadian diplomats, government agencies or parliamentarians stand up to support him. In

addition, he also asked if a Canadian citizen encountered similar legal problems in China, would the Canadian government provide similar advice and support. Dr. Hu responded how the Canadian government instructed him to “follow US law” and provided no help. In comparison, Dr. Hu addressed how US congresswomen and congressmen provided assistance in his case. He hopes that the Canadian government will be more proactive in protecting its citizens in the future, especially when handling similar legal issues, and can act more forcefully and effectively.

Social impact: A local Vancouver social activist Ally Wang participated the event in-person. The Stop Anti-Asian Hate Crimes Advocacy Group, which she co-founded, helped promote the event. She writes articles for Chinese language media. She has translated Dr. Anming Hu’s story into Chinese and will publish on a Chinese language magazine.

In conclusion, the event raised attention to racial profiling against Chinese professors in the academy in both Canada and America. It called wide attention to academic independence and impartiality, firmly oppose political interference, and encourage everyone to actively participate in discussions among universities, policymakers and the public to jointly promote the construction of an inclusive and

fair higher education environment.

WHAT: Fighting Racial Profiling and the Criminalization of Academia in North America

WHEN: March 21, 2025, 4:00 pm-6:30 pm PT/7:00 pm-9:30 pm ET

WHERE: Hybrid event

• In Person: Room 7000, SFU Vancouver Harbor Centre Campus, 515 West Hastings Street Vancouver, BC V6B 5K3 Canada

• Webinar via Zoom

HOST: Simon Fraser University, Labor Studies Program

Moderator: Dr. Xinying Hu, Simon Fraser University

Speaker:  Dr. Anming Hu, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Discussants:

• Dr. Jane Wang, University of British Columbia

• Dr. Jie Yang, Simon Fraser University

Return to Table of Contents

The Case of Professor Xiaofeng Wang 王晓峰

Xiaofeng Wang, a prominent cybersecurity professor at Indiana University Bloomington (IUB), was terminated on March 28, 2025—the same day FBI and Department of Homeland Security agents conducted searches at his homes in Bloomington and Carmel, Indiana. The university has not publicly disclosed the reasons for his dismissal.

Professor Wang's wife, Nianli Ma—a systems analyst at the university—was also terminated on March 24, 2025.

Return to Table of Contents

2025/04/08 Visa Terminations, Trump Reversal, and New ICE Policy

On January 29, 2025, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14188, which authorized the revocation of international student visas, targeting students involved in anti-Israel protests or those alleged to have violated laws during such demonstrations, particularly following the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.

Revocation of student visas began to spread beyond the executive order as part of Trump's crackdown on immigration in early April 2025.

On April 8, 2025, Inside Higher Ed began to track the revocation of F-1 or J-1 student status. As of April 25, 2025, over 280 colleges and universities have identified more than 1,800 international students and recent graduates who have had their legal status changed by the State Department.

More than 100 lawsuits and dozens of restraining orders from federal judges challenged the Trump administration’s mass termination of student visa records. After 20 days of consistent legal defeats, the administration capitulated and reversed its decision on April 25, 2025.

Notable lawsuits include

• Chen v. Noem (3:25-cv-03292), filed April 11 in the Northern District of California by the Chinese American Legal Defense Alliance (华美维权同盟 CALDA)

• Jane Doe 1 v. Bondi (1:25-cv-01998), filed April 11 in the Northern District of Georgia by CAIR-Georgia, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, and American Civil Liberties Union-Georgia.

On April 29, Politico reported that the visa revocations were part of the "Student Criminal Alien Initiative," which involved running 1.3 million student names through a federal criminal database run by the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC).  Approximately 6,400 matches were found, many of which were minor infractions or dismissed charges. Despite this, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) used the data to terminate student records in the SEVIS tracking system. In parallel, the State Department revoked visas for roughly 3,000 individuals based on similar data, separate from the SEVIS terminations.

Hundreds of the terminations, an ICE official who helped oversee the effort said, came less than 24 hours after an April 1 email exchange between his office and the State Department, with little sign of review of individual cases to ensure the decisions were accurate. 

The lack of due process became especially clear during an April 29 hearing on the case of Patel v. Lyons (1:25-cv-01096) before U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, where ICE officials admitted that hundreds of terminations were made within 24 hours of receiving raw data—with little or no individual case review.

“When the courts say due process is important, we’re not unhinged, we’re not radicals,” Judge Reyes said during an hourlong hearing. “I’m not on a lark questioning why students who have been here legally, who paid to be in this country by paying their universities … they’re cut off with less than 24 hours of consideration and no notice whatsoever." 

Akshar Patel brought the suit that led to the April 29 hearing.  He is an international student from India who pursued undergraduate studies in computer science at the University of Texas at Arlington. He graduated prior to 2025 and has since been working in the computer science field in North Texas.  HIs legal status in the U.S. was abruptly terminated after his name appeared in the ICE sweep of the NCIC database.  He had faced a reckless driving charge in 2018 but it was ultimately dismissed.

When colleges discovered the students no longer had legal status, it prompted chaos and confusion. In the past, legal statuses typically were updated after colleges told the government the students were no longer studying at the school.  In some cases this spring, colleges told students to stop working or taking classes immediately and warned them they could be deported after the ICE sweep.

According to AP News, NBC News, and multiple media reports on April 29, an internal memo to all Student and Exchange Visitor Program personnel, which falls under ICE, shows an expanded list of criteria for ICE to terminate foreign-born students’ legal status in the U.S., including a “U.S. Department of State Visa Revocation (Effective Immediately).” It was filed in court by the Justice Department on April 28 and dated April 26.

Brad Banias, an immigration attorney who represents Patel, said the new guidelines vastly expand ICE’s authority beyond previous policy, which did not count visa revocation as grounds for losing legal status. In the past, if a student had their visa revoked, they could stay in the U.S. to finish their studies — they simply would not be able to reenter if they left the country.  “This just gave them carte blanche to have the State Department revoke a visa and then deport those students even if they’ve done nothing wrong,” Banias said.

On April 11, 2025, the Chinese American Legal Defense Alliance 华美维权同盟 (CALDA) filed a lawsuit Chen v. Noem (3:25-cv-03292) on behalf of four Chinese students enrolled at UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, University of Cincinnati, and Columbia.

Return to Table of Contents

Continuing Developments

Return to Table of Contents