"A US immigration judge has granted asylum to a Chinese national who he said had a well founded fear of persecution if sent back to China after exposing alleged human rights abuses against Uyghurs there. Guan Heng applied for asylum after arriving in the US illegally in 2021. He has been in custody since being swept up in an immigration enforcement operation in August last year as part of a mass deportation campaign by the Trump administration."
"The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 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. Advantage China: Trump's tantrums push US allies closer to Beijing The ruling is an increasingly rare successful outcome for an asylum seeker since Donald Trump returned to office. The asylum approval rate dropped to 10% in 2025, down from 28% between 2010 and 2024, according to federal data compiled by US non-profit Mobile Pathways."
"It has 30 days to do so, but Ouslander urged DHS to make its decision soon, noting that Guan has already been detained for about five months. In 2020 Guan 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 a million members of ethnic minorities, especially Uyghurs, have been locked up."
A US immigration judge granted asylum to Guan Heng, who applied after arriving in the US illegally in 2021. Guan had been detained after an immigration enforcement operation in August tied to a mass deportation campaign. DHS initially sought to deport him to Uganda but dropped that plan after public and congressional attention. The ruling is rare amid a sharp drop in asylum approval rates since 2025. DHS reserved the right to appeal and has 30 days to decide. Guan filmed Xinjiang detention facilities in 2020 and said he left China to publish footage and because he sympathised with persecuted Uyghurs.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]