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Why the US border remains ‘a place of terror’ for Chinese researchers

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2024-02-27 16:30:10

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When an engineer of Chinese descent, who wishes to remain anonymous, took a flight back to his US university from a conference in Canada in September last year, he got a surprise at a stopover in Chicago, Illinois. The captain asked everyone to show their passports to border agents at the gate. The engineer, who has a Chinese passport and a green card to live and work permanently in the United States, estimates that he was detained for 90 minutes, and was asked to share his phone and laptop passwords or surrender his devices. He recalls being asked about his research, collaborations and recent publications with Chinese colleagues, and whether any of technologies they worked on were being transferred anywhere else.

The unsettling experience prompted him to pull his name from joint publications with his collaborators in China. “I was considering changing my passport to become a US citizen before this incident, but now I’m just not sure,” he adds. “They are treating us like spies.”