For years, Shaoping Wu was part of an increasingly endangered group of human rights lawyers in China.
His work culminated in 2019, when he attended a meeting with other prominent lawyers and activists. Within days, the Chinese government began to detain the participants. Mr. Wu quickly fled to the United States, where in 2020 he applied for asylum.
On Wednesday, Mr. Wu was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Pennsylvania, where he had been living with his family and working as a delivery driver for Amazon.
Supporters and relatives now fear that Mr. Wu could be deported to China, where he would likely face persecution from the Chinese Communist Party. Under China’s leader, Xi Jinping, the government has gone to great lengths to snuff out political expression, including by arresting human rights lawyers and activists. Two of the participants in the 2019 meeting are still serving lengthy prison sentences.
Mr. Wu’s wife, Caoliu Li, said that her husband had been subject to questioning and harassment by China’s security apparatus over the years, but had remained dedicated to the cause of championing rights for ordinary Chinese.
“All along, he has been very focused on the things that are unfair in China and how to change them,” Ms. Li said in an interview on Thursday from Lancaster, Pa., where the couple lives with their 17-year-old daughter.
John Visher, Mr. Wu’s lawyer, said that Mr. Wu had been delivering packages near Mount Holly Springs, Pa., when a police officer pulled him over as part of a traffic stop.
Mr. Visher said that Mr. Wu had entered the United States on a tourist visa in 2019 and that he had told the police officer about his pending asylum application and employment authorization document. Because Mr. Wu lacks legal status, the police notified immigration officials, who detained him and brought him to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania, where he is now being held.
Mr. Wu is scheduled to appear in immigration court on July 27, Mr. Visher said.
The Department of Homeland Security said in an unsigned statement that Mr. Wu had overstayed his expired visa by six years and that he would receive due process. It noted that the department was offering $2,600 and a free flight to self-deport.
Mr. Wu’s case shows how even opponents of the United States’ biggest geopolitical rival are not guaranteed favorable treatment here if their legal status is in question. And it is the latest test of how far the Trump administration is willing to go in its campaign to carry out mass deportations and curb the presence of asylum seekers.
This year, another Chinese dissident, Heng Guan, won his asylum case after he was detained by U.S. immigration officials who had tried to send him to Uganda. The department did not appeal the decision, and Mr. Guan was released.
Other cases involving Chinese nationals remain unresolved. Several Uyghurs, members of a predominantly Muslim ethnic group that has been systematically oppressed by the Chinese government, remain in ICE detention. They face deportation to third countries, according to Rushan Abbas, executive director of Campaign for Uyghurs, a Washington-based nonprofit.
The immigration actions have happened even as Mr. Trump has personally pushed for the release of two prisoners held by the Chinese government.
In May, during a summit with Mr. Xi in Beijing, Mr. Trump raised the case of Jin Mingri, a pastor who was detained in October as part of a major crackdown on Christians in China. This month, Mr. Jin was released and allowed to leave for the United States. The other prisoner, Jimmy Lai, a Hong Kong pro-democracy media tycoon, remains in Chinese custody.
In 2015, Mr. Wu was working as a commercial attorney in Shanghai when China, under the tightening grip of Mr. Xi, initiated its largest crackdown on human rights lawyers in decades. Many lawyers and activists who were arrested faced lengthy sentences. Some who remained went underground or stepped away from the work.
It was against that background that Mr. Wu joined the movement of rights defenders.
He began to take on more politically sensitive cases. His clients included Zhang Kun, an anti-corruption activist; Zhu Chengzhi, a human rights defender; and practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned in China.
“He defended some defendants that most lawyers would avoid,” said Fengsuo Zhou, the executive director of Human Rights in China, a group based in New York.
At the 2019 meeting, which Mr. Wu attended with prominent human rights defenders like Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi, participants discussed China’s besieged human rights movement and democratic change.
Even after he came to the United States, Mr. Wu continued his work for human rights and civil society in China. This month, Mr. Zhou noted, Mr. Wu had spoken at an online gathering commemorating the government’s sweeping 2015 crackdown on lawyers.
“To the outside world, human rights lawyers might seem like a group of idealistic and tragic heroes,” Mr. Wu told the audience. “However, for us, this is not a romantic or performative act, but rather our unavoidable mission and responsibility.”
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