Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., the ranking member on the House Select Subcommittee on the CCP, explains the committee's decision to request further information from DHS about its enforcement against China's alleged use of slave labor in manufacturing.
FIRST ON FOX — The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is requesting a briefing from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on the agency's implementation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), a law designed to combat the import of Chinese goods made with slave labor, according to a letter shared exclusively with Fox News Digital.
The UFLPA, passed in 2021, directed DHS' Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force to develop a strategy for quelling the importation of goods into the United States that are "manufactured wholly or in part with forced labor in the People's Republic of China."
Human rights groups began shining a spotlight on the alleged oppression and forced labor the CCP was imposing on Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), a sparsely populated Chinese territory in the country's far west.
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"The Uyghurs are being politically persecuted in Xinjiang, China. They are being forced to give up their religion. They're being forced to assimilate into Chinese culture. And many of them are being forced to do labor, to work for low wages or no wages and long hours," Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., the ranking member on the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview.
Protesters demonstrate outside the Chinese embassy in London against the alleged oppression of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, demanding that Beijing dismantle its internment camps and respect basic religious freedom. (Krisztian Elek/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Khanna argued that enforcement of the UFLPA is not just a moral issue, but one of economic and national security for Americans.
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"This is a human rights violation, but the broader problem also for Americans is that they're making steel, they're making aluminum, they're making textiles, and then they're dumping it into the U.S. market. How could U.S. Steel or Cleveland Cliffs or our aluminum manufacturers compete with slave labor? Of course we can't. So what our letter does is it says that we need more of these companies that are using forced Uyghur labor to be designated by the Department of Homeland Security," Khanna continued.
The bipartisan letter, addressed to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, asks the agency to address 10 concerns the committee has, including what work DHS and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are doing to update the list of companies and entities on the UFLPA Entity List.
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DHS added an additional 43 companies to the list in July, an action that Khanna applauded.
"I think the administration may have gotten wind that we were doing this letter and that precipitated action. You know, for a year, they hadn't done anything. Now, I give them some credit for having 44 of these companies on the list. But hopefully, once the letter goes out, we'll see more action," he said.
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