A A Chinese military investigator who hid in the Chinese consulate in San Francisco was arrested and is being held in a Sacramento jail after being accused of visa fraud.
It was first reported that Tang Juan was being sheltered by China and was wanted by US authorities on Wednesday, the same day the United States ordered the Chinese government to close its consulate in Houston. China retaliated on Friday ordering the United States to close its consulate in Chengdu.
A Justice Department official told the Washington Examiner Friday that Tang Juan, 37, was arrested, and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department’s search for inmates shows that Tang was booked into the Sacramento County Main Jail just after midnight on Friday morning. The United States police would not have had the authority to enter the Chinese consulate by force to arrest Tang, and it is not immediately clear how he ended up in US custody. He is expected to appear by video in Sacramento federal court on Friday afternoon.
Tang was one of four members of the Chinese military indicted by the Justice Department in recent weeks for concealing their ties to the Chinese military and therefore committing visa fraud while acting as students or researchers at American universities.
“These members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army applied for investigative visas while concealing their true affiliation with the EPL,” Deputy Attorney General for Homeland Security John Demers said this week. “This is another part of the Chinese Communist Party’s plan to take advantage of our open society and exploit academic institutions.”
John Brown, deputy executive director of the FBI’s National Security Division, said that “in interviews with members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in more than 25 cities in the United States, the FBI uncovered a concerted effort to conceal their true affiliation for take advantage of the United States and the American people. ”
Tang was interviewed by the FBI on June 20 about her concealment of her ties to the PLA while a researcher at the University of California, Davis, and the FBI searched her home and her electronic media showing more evidence that the had hidden. ties to the PLA when applying for a visa. Court documents show that the office “assesses that, sometime after the search and interview … Tang went to the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco.”
The FBI’s assessment that China had been harboring a fugitive from US authorities was revealed in a seven-page arrest memo related to another Chinese citizen, Chen Song, an active-duty PLA military scientist who was arrested for allegedly committing Visa fraud as a researcher at Stanford University. The FBI memo argued that “as the Tang case demonstrates, the Chinese consulate in San Francisco offers a possible safe harbor for an official EPL intention to avoid prosecution in the United States.”
The office said Tang’s J-1 visa application claimed she had never served in the Chinese military, but an “open source investigation” revealed images of her in the PLA Civilian Police uniform and that she had been employed as an investigator. at the Chinese Air Force University of Military Medicine. When the office interviewed her on June 20, Tang “denied having served in the Chinese army.” She soon fled to the nearby Chinese consulate.
“Simply put, the PRC government intends to protect its officials from prosecution in the United States,” the Justice Department filing stated.
A Justice Department official told the Washington Examiner On Wednesday, the United States had informed the Chinese government that Tang had been charged with a crime and that she was a fugitive from the law.
The Justice Department arrest memorandum also spoke about Xin Wang, a Chinese citizen arrested at the Los Angeles International Airport in June while trying to flee to China, who was a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, and who revealed that he had Lied on his visa application and was actually an active duty member at the PLA.
The memo also described the case of LT, a Chinese citizen who was in the US on a J-1 visa and was interviewed by Customs and Border Patrol at LAX, revealing that she was a researcher at Duke University while she was financed by the China Scholarship. Advice. She was affiliated with the PLA General Hospital and the PLA Medical Academy.
Kaikai Zhao, a graduate student studying machine learning and artificial intelligence at Indiana University, was arrested last week after obtaining a visa in June 2018, alleging that he never served in the Chinese military when, in fact, Zhao served in National Defense Technology University and had attended the Chinese Air Force Aviation University.
