The measures would dedicate personnel, coaching, and assets to observe transnational repression from authoritarian regimes and shield goal teams.
Home lawmakers have reintroduced three bipartisan payments to strengthen the Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) in countering the rising risk of repression from authoritarian regimes on U.S. soil.
“Transnational repression happens when the Chinese language Communist Celebration (CCP), the Iranian regime, or different international actors lengthen their attain past their borders to silence Individuals and dissidents by means of varied techniques, corresponding to harassment, assault, tried kidnapping, intimidation, and coercion,” members of the Home Committee on Homeland Safety committee stated in a March 14 press launch.
One invoice is the Countering Transnational Repression Act of 2025, which might arrange an workplace in DHS devoted to transnational repression to investigate and monitor transnational repression and associated terrorism threats. The workplace would assess transnational repression incidents and the federal efforts to analyze and disrupt such acts in an annual report for seven years after the invoice’s enactment into regulation. They’d additionally share data associated to the difficulty to federal and native companions.
The Regulation Enforcement Assist and Counter Transnational Repression Act directs the division’s Workplace of Partnership and Engagement to conduct campaigns to coach the general public and worldwide allies about transnational repression in addition to assets to assist victims.
The third invoice, Strengthening State and Native Efforts to Counter Transnational Repression Act, would require the DHS to prioritize equipping state and native regulation enforcement to fight transnational repression.
This entails creating a coaching program to assist determine cases of transnational repression, suspected perpetrators and potential targets. The coaching would additionally cowl what data regulation enforcement personnel ought to routinely share with the non-public sector, together with faith-based organizations, instructional establishments, and communities that might fall prey to the state-sponsored coercion marketing campaign, in addition to private security practices they might take to mitigate the threats. It additional clarifies assets obtainable to help with targets and victims’ brief and long run wants each inside the division and from different companies.
The laws additionally requires DHS’s branches for engagement, civil liberties, and intelligence and evaluation to interact with regulation enforcement networks nationally and people and communities underneath risk to guard them from hurt.
The respective chief sponsors of the payments are Reps. August Pfluger (R-Texas), Gabe Evans (R-Colo.), and Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-R.I.).
“As our adversaries proceed to develop more and more aggressive, conducting transnational repression towards dissidents or journalists inside the US, we should deal with these threats and shield those that communicate out towards tyranny and human rights abuses overseas,” Pfluger stated in an announcement. “The hostile acts we’re seeing throughout the nation are a direct problem to our nation’s sovereignty and infringe upon Individuals’ civil liberties.”
Evans stated he’s proud to be a part of the bipartisan effort to assist regulation enforcement companies to push again towards authoritarian regimes searching for to “undermine our nation’s sovereignty and people’ freedoms.”
“America is not going to tolerate these assaults,” he stated.
Magaziner stated the three payments collectively ship a “clear, bipartisan message: the US will at all times stand for freedom and towards authoritarian intimidation.”
“Free speech is a cornerstone of American democracy, however too typically, repressive regimes attempt to silence dissidents even after they’ve fled to the US,” he stated, including that he desires his invoice to provide regulation enforcement the instruments wanted to determine and cease international state actors from harassing and threatening folks on U.S. floor.
Transnational repression operations, significantly arising from China, have been in to the highlight not too long ago.
One goal is the New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts, which showcases historical Chinese language civilization earlier than the Chinese language Communist Celebration took maintain of China. The humanities group has confronted varied strain from the Chinese language regime to disrupt its efficiency. Previously few months, they’ve skilled ransom calls for and faux bomb threats designed to scare theaters and viewers members.
A U.S. court docket in September and November 2024 sentenced two Chinese language brokers who tried to bribe the IRS to revoke Shen Yun’s nonprofit standing on behalf of a Chinese language official.
A naturalized U.S. citizen in December 2024 pleaded responsible to working a secret Chinese language police station in New York Metropolis. His co-conspirator, who denied any wrongdoing, allegedly helped Chinese language officers determine focused dissidents in the US.
Court docket paperwork recommend he had received distinction from a Chinese language intelligence official for countering a human rights demonstration throughout Chinese language chief Xi Jinping’s 2015 go to. The demonstration was held by practitioners of the non secular group Falun Gong, which has been subjected to ongoing persecution in China since 1999.
The Home Homeland Safety Committee has counted greater than 60 instances of Chinese language espionage and transnational repression from January 2021 to February 2025. Freedom Home, a Washington human rights nonprofit, in a February report ranked China as a number one perpetrator of transnational repression in 2024.
