U.S. judge grants asylum to Chinese whistleblower who got scooped up in ICE raid

When Guan Heng read a 2020 BuzzFeed News report about China constructing massive detention camps to imprison tens of thousands of ethnic-minority Uyghurs, he decided to go and see for himself.

Guan, a YouTuber who then lived in Henan, China, drove alone into the province of Xinjiang in October 2021 and used a telephoto lens to document the hidden camps, which human rights groups say hold as many as one million Uyghurs.

The footage he captured kicked off a wild series of events that saw him flee China, sail to the U.S. by way of Ecuador and the Bahamas, then claim asylum only to get swept up last summer in an Immigration Customs and Border (ICE) raid.

Now, five years after his saga began, a U.S. judge has granted Guan’s asylum claim.

“He … testified powerfully, persuasively to prove what has happened to him — why he left China, why he did those things,” Guan’s lawyer, Chen Chuangchuang, told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal. 

‘He needed to do something’

Before all this unfolded, Guan, an avid traveller, had spent time in Xinjiang in 2019, where he noticed “some very weird things,” his lawyer said. 

“He personally witnessed how the situation in Xinjiang is very different from the inner part of China, how many men and police or military forces were on the street,” Chen said. 

Xinjiang is home to most of China’s Uyghur population, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority who,  according to human rights groups, are subjected to widespread surveillance, detention and forced labour.

At the time, his lawyer says, Guan lacked the context to explain what he saw. 

Then, in the depths of the COVD-19 lockdown, he came across Built To Last, a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative series from BuzzFeed News. Using satellite imagery and interviews with former Uyghur detainees, it details China’s efforts to scale up mass internment camps in Xinjiang.

“He thought he needed to do something,” Chen said. “That’s how he made a decision: I want to go back to Xinjiang to take videos about the camps.”

His footage appeared to corroborate BuzzFeed’s reporting, showing large facilities under construction in Xinjiang’s wilderness, towns and military bases.

He feared retribution from Chinese authorities if he published what he’d filmed, so he took his footage, flew to Ecuador, where Chinese tourists could travel without a visa, then sailed 23 hours to the Bahamas. 

There, he uploaded the clips to YouTube before boarding another boat to Miami. Upon arriving in the U.S., he filed an application for U.S. asylum. 

During Wednesday’s hearing in Napanoch, N.Y., Guan was asked if his intention in filming the detention facilities and then releasing the video a few days before arriving in the U.S. was to give him grounds to apply for asylum. He said that was not his goal.

“I sympathized with the Uyghurs who were persecuted,” Guan, speaking by video link from the Broome County Correctional Facility, told the court through a translator.

The Chinese government has long denied allegations of rights abuses in Xinjiang. The camps, it says, are not prisons, but rather vocational training programs to help local residents learn employable skills while rooting out radical thoughts.

‘Collateral arrest’ in ICE raid

Chen says his client lived in the U.S. for four years waiting for someone to review his asylum request. 

Then, last August, ICE came knocking.

Guan lived with roommates in New York, his lawyer said, and that’s who ICE was looking for when they raided the home, with a warrant.

When they asked Heng how he’d come to arrive in the U.S., he told the truth. His lawyer called it a “collateral arrest.”

The Department of Homeland Security argued that Guan, who crossed the border illegally, should be deported to Uganda. 

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration often deports people to countries they are not from, a practice upheld in July by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Guan’s arrest sparked backlash from human rights advocates, as well as U.S. politicians who said his footage helped provide the evidence they needed to pass a 2021 law that blocked imports of goods from Xinjiang.

On Wednesday, immigration Judge Charles Ouslander told Guan the court found him to be a credible witness and that he had established his legal eligibility for asylum. 

He said Guan was right to fear retaliation if sent back, noting that the Chinese government had questioned his family and inquired about Guan’s whereabouts and his past activities.

The ruling was an increasingly rare successful outcome for an asylum seeker since Trump returned to office. 

The asylum approval rate dropped to 10 per cent in 2025, down from 28 per cent between 2010 and 2024, according to federal data compiled by Mobile Pathways, a California-based nonprofit that helps immigrants navigate the U.S. legal system.

Still awaiting release

Despite his victory, Guan remains behind bars.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has 30 days to decide whether to appeal the ruling. Ouslander urged DHS to make its decision soon.

DHS did not respond to CBC’s request for comment.