Department of Homeland Security officers at ports of entry nationwide are increasingly seeing items from Chinese companies that were made by children and adults forced to work against their will.
Customs and Border Protection cracked down on products made with forced labor last fall and has made several large seizures of violations by Chinese exporters from the Xinjiang region over the summer. The United Nations estimates 1 million Uighur Muslims have been detained in labor camps there.
“Surveying emerging threats of the last year, one menacing actor continues to evolve — China,” acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf said in a speech Wednesday. “We are preventing goods produced by slave labor from entering our markets and demanding that China respect the inherent dignity of each human being.”
This week, the Trump administration moved to block imports of cotton and tomato products from the same western region of China over concerns that they were made with forced labor. The orders mean any intercepted import will be detained by CBP officers and not allowed into the United States — a move that CBP hopes deters senders from trying to do business with U.S. consumers.
Federal law prohibits the importation of merchandise mined, manufactured, or produced, in part or fully, by convict labor, forced child labor, and indentured labor.
Last October, CBP announced five products from five countries would no longer be permitted as imports into the U.S.
The banned items include clothing made by Hetian Taida Apparel Co., in Xinjiang, China; disposable rubber gloves made in Malaysia by WRP Asia Pacific; gold mined in artisanal, small mines in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo; rough diamonds from the Marange Diamond Fields in Zimbabwe; and bone black charcoal manufactured in Brazil by Bonechar Carvao Ativado Do Brasil. All items were made, mined, or produced by people forced to work.
In May, CBP implemented a ban on all imports made by the Hetian Haolin Hair Accessories Co. from Xinjiang. Then, in June, CBP officers at the Port of New York/Newark intercepted a shipment from Xinjiang that contained 13 tons of human hair extensions and products that it suspected were made from people in forced child labor and imprisonment. The government imposed a ban on all products from Lop County Meixin Hair Product Co.
CBP Executive Assistant Commissioner for the Office of Trade said the goods were made with prison labor.
China is the world’s largest exporter of cotton, most of which comes from Xinjiang. China has described the camps as vocational training centers. The centers are among places that imports are banned from.
