by WorldTribune Staff, June 10, 2025 Real World News
A Chinese researcher was arrested in Michigan on Sunday after she allegedly attempted to smuggle biological substances into the U.S. from Wuhan, China.
A Chinese researcher allegedly tried to smuggle biological materials into the U.S. from Wuhan and lied to the feds about the secretive scheme. / U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of MichiganChengxuan Han was arrested after landing at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on a flight from Shanghai, according to charging documents. She was charged with smuggling goods into the U.S. and making false statements.
After her arrival in the U.S., authorities discovered Han had sent four packages from China to individuals associated with a laboratory at the University of Michigan that “contained biological material related to round worms,” according to court documents.
Court documents show that Han lied to officers and said she didn’t send packages to members of the Michigan lab. She later claimed the packages contained plastic cups, rather than petri dishes.
When the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations interrogated Han, she admitted to shipping the biological materials to the lab from her research as a Ph.D. student from the College of Life Science and Technology in the Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in Wuhan, according to court documents.
“The alleged smuggling of biological materials by Chengxuan Han is a direct threat to public safety and national security, and it severely compromises the integrity of our nation’s research institutions,” said Cheyvoryea Gibson, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Detroit Field Office, in a statement on Monday.
“I applaud the relentless efforts of the FBI Detroit Counterintelligence Task Force, working in close coordination with U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Field Operations and ICE Homeland Security Investigations Detroit. The FBI in Michigan will aggressively pursue anyone who seeks to harm our country and will deploy every available resource to defend the United States and protect our communities,” Gibson added.
Han was denied a visa to travel to the U.S. on two separate occasions in March. In one of her attempts to obtain a visa, Han “could not clearly answer basic questions about herself or her research,” according to court documents.
Han is the third Chinese scientist to be charged with smuggling illegal biological materials into Michigan in recent weeks. The terrorism implications of those efforts have yet to be assessed.
Related: Chinese national in pathogen plot worked at U.S. taxpayer funded lab, June 5, 2025
Earlier this month, Yunqing Jian, 33, and her boyfriend Zunyong Liu, 34, were caught allegedly trying to smuggle samples of a dangerous crop-killing fungus into the U.S., the FBI said. Jian, a Communist Party loyalist and lab researcher at the University of Michigan who received Chinese government funding for her work, was charged last week in a plot that national security insiders called “an attack on U.S. food supply.”
Yet another Wuhan scientist charged with smuggling biological substances into U.S. added by Editor Two on June 10, 2025
View all posts by Editor Two →
Source link