#343 8/4 Meeting; No China Initiative; Heartland to China; Court Defiance; Denaturalization

In This Issue #343

·        2025/08/04 APA Justice Monthly Meeting

·        1100+ University Faculty on Harm of Revival of China Initiative

·        Support the 2nd Heartland Leaders Delegation to China – October 2025

·        How the Trump Administration is Defying the Courts

·        DOJ Prioritizing Denaturalization

·        News and Activities for the Communities

2025/08/04 APA Justice Monthly Meeting

The next APA Justice monthly meeting will be held on Monday, August 4, 2025, starting at 1:55 pm ET.In addition to updates from:

·        Judith Teruya, Executive Director, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC)

·        Joanna YangQing Derman, Program Director, Advancing Justice | AAJC

·        Gisela Perez Kusakawa, Executive Director, Asian American Scholar Forum (AASF)

We are honored by and welcome the following distinguished speakers:

·        Al Green, Member, U.S. Congress (invited)

·        Munira Abdullahi, Member, Ohio House of Representatives

·        Guangya Liu, Member, North Carolina House of Representatives

·        Min Fan, Executive Director, US Heartland China Association

The virtual monthly meeting is by invitation only. It is closed to the press. If you wish to join, either one time or for future meetings, please contact one of the co-organizers of APA Justice - Steven Pei 白先慎, Vincent Wang 王文奎, and Jeremy Wu 胡善庆 - or send a message to contact@apajustice.org. 

1100+ University Faculty on Harm of Revival of China Initiative

In a letter addressed to House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole and Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro, Stanford Professors Steven Kivelson and Peter Michelson, on behalf of over 100 Stanford faculty and more than 1,000 faculty and senior research staff nationwide, urge Congress to reject efforts to reinstate the Department of Justice’s China Initiative. The professors argue that the initiative, originally launched to counter intellectual property theft by the Chinese government, instead produced unintended and damaging consequences for the U.S. scientific community and broader national interests.

They contend that the China Initiative disproportionately targeted scientists of Chinese descent, fostered a climate of fear and suspicion in academia, and discouraged international collaboration. As a result, it had a chilling effect on global scientific exchange and pushed highly trained researchers—especially in STEM fields—to leave the U.S. or avoid coming altogether. This, the letter argues, played into the hands of the Chinese government more than it thwarted espionage, effectively weakening American leadership in science and innovation.

Professors Michelson, Kivelson, and their colleagues emphasize that immigrant scientists are a cornerstone of the U.S. innovation ecosystem. Nearly half of the U.S. STEM PhD workforce is foreign-born, with Chinese nationals making up a significant portion. They note that approximately 90% of Chinese STEM PhDs trained in the U.S. choose to stay, often contributing to cutting-edge research and development in academia and industry.

While affirming the importance of protecting national security and intellectual property, the authors advocate for a more balanced, targeted approach to risk management—one that avoids casting suspicion broadly on scientists based on ethnicity or nationality. They cite both the 2022 decision by the DOJ to end the China Initiative and the National Academies' recommendation to reduce its lingering harmful effects as evidence of broad expert consensus.

The letter stresses that reviving the China Initiative would not serve U.S. interests and would instead jeopardize the country's ability to attract top global talent. The professors urge Congress to prioritize American competitiveness and innovation by fostering a welcoming and inclusive research environment rather than reviving policies that undermine it.

The Asian American Scholar Forum (AASF) issued a strong statement of support for the letter, emphasizing that the China Initiative was not only discriminatory but counterproductive to U.S. innovation and national security. AASF warned that reviving the program would drive away critical global talent, weaken scientific progress, and harm the very competitiveness it purports to protect. Executive Director Gisela Perez Kusakawa stated, “Reinstating the China Initiative would be a grave mistake, not only from a civil rights perspective, but also for America’s future as a global leader in science and technology.” AASF reaffirmed its commitment to safeguarding the rights and dignity of all scholars while supporting efforts to maintain U.S. scientific leadership through openness, fairness, and international collaboration.A parallel effort led by Stop AAPI Hate and over 60 civil rights, academic, and advocacy organizations—including APA Justice—echoed these concerns in a joint letter to the same congressional leaders. They urged Congress to remove language in the FY 2026 appropriations bill that would effectively reinstate the China Initiative through the DOJ’s National Security Division. The coalition emphasized the discriminatory nature of the initiative, highlighting its history of racial profiling, unjust prosecutions, and chilling effects on scientific research. They cited high-profile cases such as those of Drs. Anming Hu and Gang Chen as emblematic of the initiative’s failure and harm, and warned that any reinstatement would reverse hard-won progress in civil rights, undermine trust in government, and diminish America’s leadership in science and technology.

Support the 2nd Heartland Leaders Delegation to China – October 2025

U.S. Heartland China Association (USHCA) is organizing the 2nd Heartland Leaders Delegation to China this October to attend the Yangtze-Mississippi Regional Dialogue (YMRD) in Wuhan, Hubei Province. USHCA invites the Chinese American community to nominate local leaders to join this important delegation and support their travel and participation.

The Chinese American community has always been a bridge between the U.S. and China - championing dialogue, trust, and enduring relationships. As U.S.-China relations deteriorated over the past decade, Chinese Americans often found us stuck in the middle of two global powers.  

At this critical junction, people-to-people exchanges are among the most effective ways to restore mutual understanding and trust.

In recent years, vital exchange programs have been cut, including the Fulbright program and funding for fact-finding travels to China for U.S. congressional staff and lawmakers.

Despite all these challenges, U.S. Heartland China Association launched a new exchange program: the Yangtze-Mississippi Regional Dialogue (YMRD), a groundbreaking initiative that builds people-to-people and region-to-region connections between the Mississippi River Basin community and the Yangtze River Basin of China. 

2023: Strong Beginning launched by Six U.S. Mayors. The inaugural Yangtze-Mississippi Exchange took place in Shanghai in 2023, where a delegation of six U.S. mayors met with their Chinese counterparts. This was the first U.S. Mayors Delegation to visit China post pandemic (Press Release, Video recap) and a powerful demonstration of what’s possible when regional leaders engage globally directly. 

2024: Building Momentum in Memphis. The Yangtze-Mississippi Exchange, renamed as Yangtze-Mississippi Regional Dialogue (YMRD), was held in Memphis, with American mayors hosting more than 30 Chinese delegates from Shanghai, Chongqing, Hubei, and Jiangxi. Local leaders from both countries led key discussions on topics such as climate resilience, climate smart agriculture, and green transportation. The dialogue in Memphis underscored how cities are playing an essential role in advancing practical cooperation with Chinese peers.

2025: Charting the next phase in Wuhan. The 3rd YMRD will be held in Wuhan on October 29-30, 2025. Delegates will have an opportunity to not only visit China (Shanghai, Hangzhou, Wuhan) but also to leverage the foundation laid by two prior dialogues to engage with their peers on topics of shared interest in a key region of China.

Why Your Support Matters

The success of this dialogue depends on the strength of the U.S. delegation and support from the local community as USHCA is dealing with significant funding cuts like many nonprofits in this space. YMRD needs the support of the Chinese American community now more than ever.  Here is how you can help:

·        Nominate local leaders (mayors, county executives, head of local chamber of commerce, business leaders) to join the delegation.

·        Connect USHCA with local stakeholders interested in exchange and cooperation.

·        Sponsor or help fund delegate participation and programming.

At its core, the Yangtze-Mississippi Regional Dialogue is about local leadership driving global impact. With your help, we can ensure more voices are at the table, and that meaningful relationships continue to grow across the Pacific.

Let’s build the future from the ground up—through shared values, mutual respect, and real-world collaboration.

Min Fan 范敏, Executive Director of USHCA, has accepted an invitation to speak at the APA Justice monthly meeting on Monday, August 4, 2025

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For more information or to offer support, please contact Min Fan at mfan@usheartlandchina.org 

How the Trump Administration is Defying the Courts

Author: Madeleine Gable, APA Justice Communications Associate

According to recent analysis from The Washington Post, the Trump administration is accused of defying court rulings in roughly a third of the more than 160 lawsuits it has lost, raising concerns about its disregard for judicial authority in the U.S.

Of the 337 lawsuits filed against the administration since the beginning of Trump’s return to office, courts have ruled against the administration in 165 of the lawsuits. In 57 of those cases, the Post found that the administration is accused of defying or frustrating court oversight.

The Trump administration has routinely defied court rulings, provided false information, withheld evidence, quietly circumvented court orders, and devised pretexts to pursue actions that have been blocked. Such conduct is unprecedented for any presidential administration and threatens to undermine the judiciary’s rule as a check on the executive branch.

As of yet, no judge has taken punitive action to force compliance. Legal analysts are unsurprised as courts are typically slow to begin contempt proceedings for noncompliance. Furthermore, the judicial system cannot enforce their own rulings — that authority remains with the U.S. Marshals Service. Judges are concerned the U.S. Marshals will not comply with court directives, as an entity of the executive branch whose director is appointed by the president.

Immigration cases have seen the most resistance, as evidenced in the case of Kilmar Abrego García. The Supreme Court ordered the government to facilitate his return after the administration deported him to a notorious prison in El Salvador despite a court order forbidding his removal to that country. He remained there for almost two months.

The administration also clashed with Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg who ordered that deportation flights to El Salvador be turned around. The administration disregarded the order. According to a whistleblower complaint filed by fired Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told staffers that a judge might try to block them, and that it might be necessary to tell a court “f— you’’ and ignore the order. 

The Trump administration also disregarded the order of U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, a Trump appointee, to facilitate the return of a Venezuelan man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador.

Other problematic cases regard cuts to federal funding and the workforce. Such clashes involved layoffs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the freezing of all federal grants and loans by the White House Office of Management and Budget, and a ban on transgender people in the military.

Judge Boasberg remains the only judge to actively pursue sanctioning the administration for its conduct. The contempt proceedings he instigated were paused without explanation by an appeals court panel three months ago.

On January 21, 2025, Just Security started a Litigation Tracker on Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions. The number of cases it is tracking closely resembles Washington Post’s report although it treats over 100 lawsuits involving the removal of F-1 foreign student visa registration as one. 

The New York Times also maintains a tracker on Lawsuits against Trump’s Agenda in topical order.

The administration’s pattern of disregarding judicial rulings undermines a fundamental principle of democratic governance: that no branch of government is above the law. When court orders are ignored without consequence, it erodes public confidence in the judiciary’s ability to serve as a check on executive power.

DOJ Prioritizing Denaturalization

Author: Madeleine Gable, APA Justice Communications Associate 

According to an internal memo published online on June 11, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is aggressively prioritizing denaturalization cases and expanding the criteria necessary for pursuing denaturalization cases. The memo lists 10 categories of priority for such cases. Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate wrote that denaturalization will be among the agency’s top five enforcement priorities for the civil division.

This renewed focus reflects a broader historical pattern. As NPR explains, denaturalization was heavily employed during the McCarthy era of the late 1940s and early 1950s to revoke the citizenship of individuals who concealed criminal convictions or affiliations with prohibited groups—such as Nazis or communists—on their naturalization applications. According to a report published by Cassandra Robertson, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University, there were about 22,000 cases of denaturalization filed a year during the McCarthy era. 

In 1967, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that found denaturalization “inconsistent with the American form of democracy, because it creates two levels of citizenship.” Between 1990 and 2017, the DOJ filed an average of 11 denaturalization cases per year. However, the practice saw expansion under the Obama administration as they began using new digital tools to find potential denaturalization fraud cases going back decades. Denaturalization grew even more prevalent during President Trump's first term. Irina Manta, a Hofstra University professor and co-author of the report with Robertson, found an average of 42 denaturalization cases filed per year during President Trump’s first term and an average of 16 per year filed during President Biden’s term. 

The first Trump administration sought to significantly expand the government’s use of denaturalization and chose to file denaturalization cases via civil courts rather than criminal. In 2018, the Trump administration created a new office within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services dedicated to reviewing and initiating denaturalization proceedings against thousands of individuals. 

Denaturalization, the legal process of revoking U.S. citizenship from a naturalized immigrant, carries significant consequences. Once stripped of citizenship, the individual returns to the immigration status they held before becoming a U.S. citizen. Afterwards, they may face deportation if they do not have lawful immigration status and/or serve jail time if denaturalization was due to a criminal conviction.

According to the DOJ memo, there are two grounds for denaturalization: 

1.      Procurement of naturalization by concealing a material fact or by willful misrepresentation

2.      Illegal procurement of naturalization

In Maslenjak v. United States in 2017, the Supreme Court unanimously held that only an illegal act that played a role in an individual’s procurement of U.S. citizenship could be grounds for criminal denaturalization. This decision narrowed the scope under which an individual could be denaturalized.

According to Robertson, the especially concerning aspect of the DOJ memo is that it directs the federal government to pursue denaturalization efforts via civil litigation. In civil proceedings, the individual subject to denaturalization is not entitled to an attorney, and there is a lower burden of proof for the government to reach. Robertson insists that pursuing denaturalization via civil litigation violates due process and infringes on the rights guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.

Sameera Hafiz, policy director of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, is especially concerned with the expanded criteria of which crimes put an individual at risk of denaturalization. According to the memo, expanded criteria include national security violations and acts of fraud against individuals or against the government, such as Paycheck Protection Program loan fraud or Medicaid fraud. Hafiz says this is synonymous with “trying to create a second class of U.S. citizens,” where U.S. citizens born in the country are safe and those who were not are at risk of losing their citizenship.

The memo also gives U.S. attorneys broader discretion to determine eligible denaturalization cases. Steve Lubet, professor emeritus at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, said the memo grants the federal government “wide discretion” on deciding whom to target, calling the categories “so vague as to be meaningless.” Lubet also raised concerns about the impact of denaturalization on families, particularly children who received U.S. citizenship through a parent whose naturalization was later revoked. 

Robertson remains concerned about the prioritization of denaturalization as “there just aren’t very many cases that fit within the framework of priorities.” This will cause the administration to focus on “people who have not committed any serious infraction, or maybe any infraction at all.”

Concerns remain that the government’s aggressive denaturalization efforts could lead to the revocation of U.S. citizenship of many individuals who made minor or unintentional mistakes in their application. Many of the questions are vague, broad, and unclear. In addition, courts have not specified what constitutes an offense material to the individual obtaining citizenship and could be the basis for a denaturalization proceeding.

The focus on denaturalization is the latest effort by the Trump administration to reshape the immigrant landscape in the U.S. Since his return to office, President Trump has also sought to end birthright citizenship and curtail refugee programs.

The Denaturalization Fact Sheet produced by the National Immigration Forum is a concise, informative document that explains what denaturalization is, the legal grounds for it, and how the process works.  

News and Activities for the Communities

1. APA Justice Community Calendar

Upcoming Events:2025/07/24 2025 ILF Scholarship & Awards Gala2025/07/25 From Classroom to Commerce: The Value of Chinese Students to American Business2025/07/25-27 Asian American Pioneer Medal Symposium and Ceremony 2025/07/28 (Digital) Travel Safety and Security Training2025/07/29 C100 Conversations – “Recollections, Pioneers and Heroes” with Linda Chao Yang2025/07/29 From Heartland to Mainland: 2025 Future Ag Leaders Delegation2025/07/29 Bridging Generations of U.S.-China Education Exchange: American Scholars to China2025/07/31 (Digital) Travel Safety and Security Training2025/07/31-08/10 Asian American International Film Festival2025/08/02-07 2025 Joint Statistical Meetings2025/08/04 APA Justice Monthly MeetingVisit https://bit.ly/3XD61qV for event details.

2. Travel Safety & Security Training on July 28 and 31, 2025

Are you currently overseas and traveling back to the United States later this summer? The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is offering a one-hour information session with the Democracy Security Project (DSP) on how you should mitigate both cyber and physical vulnerabilities while traveling. The team at DSP will offer practical and pragmatic solutions on a number of subjects like handling your devices, data privacy, and border security best practices.The same session is offered twice, on July 28 at 8:00 p.m. ET and July 31 at 10:00 a.m. ET.  Register and receive the Zoom information at:

·        Register for the July 28 meeting here.

·        Register for the July 31 meeting here.

For more information on the event, please email: 

·        AFT Union Leadership Institute (uli_support@aft.org)

·        AFT Higher Education Division (highereddept@aft.org)

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APA Justice Task Force is a non-partisan platform to build a sustainable ecosystem that addresses racial profiling concerns and to facilitate, inform, and advocate on selected issues related to justice and fairness for the Asian Pacific American community.  For more information, please refer to the new APA Justice website under development at www.apajusticetaskforce.org. We value your feedback. Please send your comments to contact@apajustice.org.