(PresidentialWire.com)- On Tuesday, Kansas Republican Senator Roger Marshall announced that he was introducing legislation to create an FBI hotline for callers to anonymously report anyone participating in the “coercion” and “harassment” from surveillance and extradition operations carried out by illegal Chinese “police stations” on US soil.
In February, The State Department confirmed that the America Changle Association in New York’s Chinatown, which reportedly housed a police station linked to Chinese intelligence has closed down.
In January, it was reported that the FBI raided the Chinatown location last fall and seized evidence.
According to the human rights group Safeguard Defenders, the Chinatown police station was part of an international police unit headquartered in China’s Fujian province specializing in extradition operations.
It is estimated that China operates more than 100 such facilities throughout the world that are suspected of carrying out policing. Other Chinese police outposts in the United States are housed within private businesses like Chinese restaurants and commercial associations, according to the New York Times.
In announcing his legislation, Senator Marchall called China “the greatest geo-political threat” to the United States and said anyone targeting individuals in the United States on behalf of China, including surveillance and spying, “must be prosecuted.” Marshall said setting up an anonymous hotline to the FBI would allow the bureau to “intervene” and put an end to Beijing’s “unlawful ‘policing’ in the U.S.”
The legislation would empower the FBI Director to set up a hotline to receive anonymous tips about individuals engaging in “law enforcement activities” or “surveilling, harassing, intimidating, or coercing” another person “on behalf of the Government of China or the Chinese Communist Party” in the United States. This would include “coercing current or former Chinese nationals to return to China.”
The legislation would make such activities a felony carrying a maximum of 10 years in prison.
