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<\/picture> <\/div>\nThe Trump administration claims that its new Homeland Security task forces are here to protect Americans from an “invasion” by undocumented immigrants and thwart terrorist organizations, foreign cartels, and transnational gangs. So why are they targeting immigrant asylum seekers\u2014who are in the country legally\u2014over sex work?<\/p>\n
To be fair, this seems to be a minor part of the task forces’ business. Much of the time, they’ve been waging a drug war against American citizens, as I reported last month<\/a>.<\/p>\n Today, I want to focus on one case that didn’t make it into that piece. It’s the case that turned me on to the shams that are these new Homeland Security task forces, and it involves an old preoccupation of federal law enforcement<\/a>: Asian immigrant\u2013owned massage parlors.<\/p>\n “Four Chinese nationals indicted on charges of human trafficking, immigration violations, and money laundering,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania announced<\/a> in January. At first, it seemed like a standard massage-parlor prostitution bust. But then I got to this language:<\/p>\n This prosecution is part of the Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) initiative established by Executive Order 14159, Protecting the American People Against Invasion. The HSTF is a whole-of-government partnership dedicated to eliminating criminal cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations, and human smuggling and trafficking rings operating in the United States and abroad. Through historic interagency collaboration, the HSTF directs the full might of United States law enforcement towards identifying, investigating, and prosecuting the full spectrum of crimes committed by these organizations, which have long fueled violence and instability within our borders. In performing this work, the HSTF places special emphasis on investigating and prosecuting those engaged in child trafficking or other crimes involving children. The HSTF further utilizes all available tools to prosecute and remove the most violent criminal aliens from the United States.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n That’s some serious rhetoric. Was there, perhaps, more than just adult prostitution going on here? Or was this just the feds leveling up their anti-immigrant propaganda If you guessed the latter, you may be a realist about how law enforcement operates.<\/p>\n In this case, the feds had indicted one dead person. So that brings our actual number of defendants down to three.<\/p>\n These three defendants\u2014Shuhua Qiu, Chunlong Lin, and Lijuan Zhao\u2014were all legal immigrants, according to U.S. Attorney Paul Sellers.<\/p>\n Qiu, a licensed massage therapist, had been in the country for 16 years and was granted political asylum from China. Zhao petitioned for asylum years ago but was still awaiting a decision.<\/p>\n Prosecutors allege that Qiu, Lin, and Zhao owned and managed two spas where sex acts sometimes took place alongside regular massages. That’s all.<\/p>\n The defendants are not<\/em> alleged to have used force, or to have smuggled illegal immigrants into the country. They’re not alleged to be part of a transnational trafficking cartel. They just employed immigrant sex workers, prosecutors claim, and sometimes drove them from Queens across state lines to Pennsylvania or vice versa.<\/p>\n They were indicted<\/a> in January\u2014ending a two-year<\/em> investigation, according to<\/a> the Erie Times-News<\/em>\u2014and accused of running two spas “that served as fronts for unlawful businesses in which persons promoted and engaged in commercial sex.”<\/p>\n The trafficking charges stem from the fact that it’s illegal to bring someone across state lines for the purposes of prostitution. The immigration charge? Because it’s illegal to harbor noncitizen sex workers without reporting them to immigration authorities. And the money laundering charge stems from the fact that the defendants used banks to run their (allegedly illicit) massage business.<\/p>\n One of the defendants, Zhao, pleaded guilty in June and is now on track to be deported. The other two have pleaded not guilty, and their cases are ongoing.<\/p>\n As part of a plea deal, Zhao pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit a crime against the United States<\/a>. Prosecutors asked the court to sentence her to 10 to 16 months in prison and, at sentencing, accused Zhao of human trafficking, despite the fact that the case involves no allegations that the women employed at these massage businesses were forced into work or sex.<\/p>\n Judge Susan Paradise Baxter told Zhao that the court was “disgusted” by her actions and sentenced her to time served (the nearly five months she had already been imprisoned since her arrest).<\/p>\n But Zhao won’t get out of prison yet. “Zhao is also being held in prison on an immigration detainer, and she will eventually be deported to China,” reports<\/a> the Erie Times-News<\/em>. “Baxter indicated that Zhao could remain jailed on the immigration detainer for an extended period of time\u2014perhaps even longer than any sentence she would receive in the prostitution case.”<\/p>\n The feds were framing this as a blow against “the most violent criminal aliens.” In reality, they locked up a middle-aged immigrant woman for employing sex workers at her massage business without ratting them out to immigration authorities.<\/p>\n ICE’s internal investigations unit is now investigating Americans who criticize ICE.<\/strong> The agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility is “supposed to act as an internal watchdog,” Wired<\/em> points out. “It’s responsible for inspecting detention facilities, investigating allegations of employee and contractor misconduct, and processing security checks for new applicants. On its site, it says it also protects against ‘external threats’ by managing badge access to buildings and maintaining the agency’s network security. But lately, court documents indicate, it appears to be pursuing more civilians…for what they say online.” Read the whole thing here<\/a>.<\/p>\n “‘Social media addiction’ is way more complicated than you think,”<\/strong> write<\/a> Sally Satel and Stephen Morse at Persuasion<\/em>. Satel is a lecturer in psychiatry at Yale and directs a methadone clinic, in addition to being an American Enterprise Institute senior fellow. Morse teaches law and psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. Both are critical of the way “social media addiction” cases are playing out in court, suggesting that “the courtroom is a domain where the claim of being ‘addicted’ should be held to a different, more stringent standard” than in the clinician’s office.<\/p>\n This is not to deny that habitual or addictive behavior has a biological basis. All behavior has a biological basis. The neurotransmitter dopamine appears to play a role, but its importance has been wildly exaggerated by professionals, including a Stanford psychiatrist who served as an expert witness in Kaley’s case and has called smartphones “the modern-day hypodermic needle<\/a>, delivering digital dopamine 24-7 for a wired generation.” The so-called “dopamine theory of addiction” has been harshly<\/a> criticized<\/a> as too simplistic.<\/p>\n Most relevant to legal action, however, is that we cannot distinguish between an urge to scroll that wasn’t<\/em> resisted and one that could not<\/em> be resisted. Vexing questions abound. Is there a clear way to disentangle the role played by social media “addiction” from the influence of preexisting psychological problems, especially since such problems are ubiquitous among teens? Is it possible that teens’ distress caused them to turn to intensive social media use in the first place, rather than the other way around?<\/p>\n We cannot know. Nothing\u2014no brain scan, blood test, or psychological measure\u2014can validate anyone’s capacity to control an urge, or identify the specific cause of psychological harms.<\/p>\n Making such determinations is not essential for treatment, where the goal is to help people no matter the cause of their distress. But they are vital for adjudicating liability for defendants accused of addicting people, because this could be the basis of lawsuits that can cost companies millions of dollars and extensively expand civil liability.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n More here<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is especially important considering the absurd sums that states are seeking in these trials.<\/p>\n Beyond ludicrous to seek damages worth the entire value of the company. This isn't about righting any wrongs, it's about destroying several critical outlets for speech. The economic damage to 401Ks, pensions, & small business would be enormous as well. https:\/\/t.co\/8iuZ1cQGiG<\/a><\/p>\n — Patrick Hedger (@pat_hedger) July 7, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
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