Khanna, Moolenaar, Merkley, McGovern, Smith, and Thompson Request Homeland Security Briefing on Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) Implementation

WASHINGTON - Ranking Member Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI) of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), alongside Congressional Executive Commission on China (CECC) Co-Chair Chris Smith (R-NJ), CECC Ranking Members Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Jim McGovern (D-MA), House Committee on Homeland Security Ranking Member Bennie Thompson (D-MS), and Select Committee Members Young Kim (R-CA) and Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin requesting a briefing on the Department's implementation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA). The lawmakers also request information on the enforcement of additional U.S. trade laws preventing the influx of illegally traded goods originating from the People's Republic of China (PRC) that harm American industries and workers.

"Congress enacted these laws to ensure that illegally traded goods, particularly those made with forced labor, do not enter U.S. commerce and do not make American consumers complicit in atrocities, including genocide, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR)," the lawmakers write. "Strong enforcement protects human rights, supports American workers, and helps ensure that U.S. businesses are not undercut by illegal and unfair trade practices."

"Publicly available information raises concerns about recent enforcement trends," the lawmakers continue. "Reports of substantially declining detention activity in key high-risk sectors, combined with continued imports from known transshipment hubs and PRC-linked supply chains, make it important for Congress to understand how DHS is setting enforcement priorities, measuring results, and identifying gaps in enforcement capacity."

The lawmakers request a briefing within 30 days addressing the following:

1. Current DHS, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force enforcement priorities across high-risk and priority enforcement sectors, including consumer goods, seafood, textiles and apparel, steel and aluminum, polysilicon, silane gas, silicon-carbon materials, critical minerals, and other advanced materials;
2. Enforcement measures addressing forced labor exposure in seafood supply chains, including vessel-based labor abuses, transshipment practices, and coordination with other federal agencies;
3. The status of efforts to update and expand the UFLPA Entity List and any barriers or resource constraints to the listing of additional entities;
4. Data on shipments detained, released, excluded, or seized under UFLPA and Section 307 authorities, including trends over the past year, sector-specific data, and country-of-shipment data;
5. Current evidentiary standards required for importers to rebut the UFLPA presumption, including the types of supply-chain tracing, documentation, and verification CBP currently requires;
6. Staffing levels and resources at CBP and DHS dedicated to UFLPA enforcement and FLETF duties, including any changes since 2024;
7. How DHS is evaluating emerging supply chains, including silicon-carbon battery anodes, critical minerals, and other advanced materials, for forced-labor exposure;
8. DHS's efforts to investigate forced labor violations and other trade-related crimes, including in partnership with the Department of Justice's Trade Fraud Task Force launched in August 2025 and other relevant federal agencies;
9. DHS's bilateral and multilateral engagements with foreign governments to promote enforceable forced-labor import bans, reduce diversion and transshipment, and strengthen international supply-chain accountability; and
10. How DHS is leveraging artificial intelligence to validate shipment country-of-origin and supply-chain documentation to identify potential UFLPA violations or other inconsistencies in shipment data.

Full text of the letter is available here.

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