Chinese national who exposed human rights abuses in his homeland is granted asylum to remain in US

An immigration judge on Wednesday granted asylum to a Chinese national who he said had a “well founded fear” of persecution if sent back to China after exposing human rights abuses there. Guan Heng, 38, applied for asylum after arriving in the U.S. illegally in 2021. He has been in custody since being swept up in an immigration enforcement operation in August as part of a mass deportation campaign by the Trump administration.

The Department of Homeland Security initially sought to deport Guan to Uganda, but dropped the plan in December after his plight raised public concerns and attracted attention on Capitol Hill.

Guan in 2020 secretly filmed detention facilities in Xinjiang, adding to a body of evidence of what activists say are widespread rights abuses in the Chinese region, where as many as 1 million members of ethnic minorities, especially the Uyghurs, have been locked up.

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