Quote:U.S. officials pried open the doors of the Chinese consulate in Houston on Friday and took over the building shortly after Chinese officials vacated the facility on orders from the Trump Administration.

Federal officials and local law enforcement surrounded the Houston facility Friday afternoon as the Chinese officials moved out of the building that the Trump Administration contends was a hub of spy activity by the Chinese Communist Party.

Forty minutes after the 4 p.m. eviction deadline passed, U.S. officials broke into a back door of the consulate and a man believed to be a State Department official led the way of the U.S. takeover, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Photographs show federal officials and a locksmith trying to force their way into the vacated Consulate General of China. U.S. officials had tried three other entrances but couldn't get in. Security teams donning U.S. State Department emblems on their shirts stood guard. The Houston Chronicle reported that the local fire department entered the building, too.

Tuesday night, hours after the Trump Administration announced its directive for the Chinese to vacate, the Houston Fire Department responded to fires at the courtyard of the building -- an apparent effort to destroy documents. Chinese officials refused to allow the first responders to enter to put out the fires, Fox 26 in Houston reported.

All morning Friday, consulate workers were spotted loading up two U-haul trucks and vehicles and tossing trash bags into a nearby Dumpster in an attempt to meet the U.S.'s 4 p.m. eviction deadline, the Chronicle reported.

“We can confirm that the PRC Consulate General in Houston is closed," a State Department spokesperson told Fox News.

After the Chinese officials packed up and left, U.S. teams began to force their way in. After two hours of gaining entry, the government officials loaded into a van and drove away, leaving the Houston Police and security teams behind at the scene, the Houston Chronicle reported.

The U.S. alleged that the consulate was a nest of Chinese spies who tried to steal data from facilities in Texas, including the Texas A&M medical system and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week called the Houston complex "a hub of spying and IP theft." Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said the consulate was a "massive spy center [and] forcing it to close is long overdue."

China called the allegations “malicious slander” and responded by ordering the U.S. to close its consulate in the western Chinese city of Chengdu.

U.S. officials were spotted packing up and moving out of the Chengdu consulate Saturday as thousands of people gathered to watch the Americans forced to exit on Beijing's orders.

The South China Morning Post reported that three trucks and a bus were seen entering and leaving the U.S. compound while other workers left on foot with the arms full of boxes and files. Reuters reported the American consulate emblem was taken down and security was tight outside the facility for the moveout in the tit-for-tat consulate closures.

Quote:A Chinese military researcher hiding out in China’s San Francisco consulate has been arrested and is being held in a Sacramento jail after being charged with visa fraud.

It was first reported that Tang Juan was being harbored by China and was wanted by U.S. authorities on Wednesday, the same day that the United States ordered the Chinese government to shut down its consulate in Houston. China retaliated on Friday by ordering the U.S. to shut down its consulate in Chengdu.

A Justice Department official told the Washington Examiner on Friday that Tang Juan, 37, was arrested, and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department inmate search shows that Tang was booked at the Sacramento County Main Jail just after midnight early Friday morning. U.S. law enforcement would not have had the authority to enter the Chinese consulate forcibly to arrest Tang, and it is not immediately clear how she ended up in U.S. custody. She is expected to make an appearance by video at a Sacramento federal courtroom Friday afternoon.

Tang was one of four Chinese military members who have been charged by the Justice Department in recent weeks for concealing their ties to China's military and thus committing visa fraud while acting as students or researchers at U.S. universities.

“These members of China’s People Liberation Army applied for research visas while hiding their true affiliation with the PLA,” Assistant Attorney General for National 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, the executive assistant director of the FBI's National Security Branch, said that “in interviews with members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in over 25 cities across the U.S., the FBI uncovered a concerted effort to hide their true affiliation to take advantage of the United States and the American people.”

Tang was interviewed by the FBI on June 20 about her concealing her ties to the PLA while she was a researcher at the University of California, Davis, and the FBI executed a search of her home and her electronics media showing further evidence she had hidden her ties to the PLA when applying for a visa. Court documents show that the bureau “assesses that, at some point following 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 U.S. authorities was revealed in a seven-page detention memo related to another Chinese national, 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 provides a potential safe harbor for a PLA official intent on avoiding prosecution in the United States.”

The bureau said Tang's J-1 visa application claimed she had never served in the Chinese military, but an “open source investigation” revealed pictures of her in the uniform of the Civilian Cadre of the PLA and that she had been employed as a researcher at China’s Air Force Military Medical University. When the bureau interviewed her on June 20, Tang “denied serving in the Chinese military.” She soon fled to the nearby Chinese consulate.

“Put simply, the PRC government is intent on protecting its officials from prosecution in the United States,” DOJ’s court filing stated.

A Justice Department official told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday that the U.S. had made the Chinese government aware that Tang has been charged with a crime and that she was a fugitive from the law.

The DOJ’s detention memo also discussed Xin Wang, a Chinese national arrested at 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 he had lied on his visa application and was actually an active duty member in the PLA.

The memo additionally described the case of L.T., a Chinese national who was in the U.S. 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 being funded by the China Scholarship Council. She was affiliated with the PLA General Hospital and PLA Medical Academy.

Kaikai Zhao, a graduate student studying machine learning and artificial intelligence at Indiana University, was arrested last week after lying on a visa in June 2018, claiming never to have served in the Chinese military when, in fact, Zhao served in the National University of Defense Technology and had attended the Chinese Air Force Aviation University.

(07-25-2020 07:05 PM)bullet Wrote:  Wonder what happened in the Obama admin with all these spies. Did they ignore them? Were they too incompetent to find them? Did they quietly ask them to leave without consequence?

(07-25-2020 07:05 PM)bullet Wrote:  Wonder what happened in the Obama admin with all these spies. Did they ignore them? Were they too incompetent to find them? Did they quietly ask them to leave without consequence?