Lawmakers Press DHS for UFLPA Briefing as Detentions Drop
A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers called on the Trump administration on Thursday to provide an urgent briefing on its enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, citing growing concerns over the substantial decline in detentions of goods linked to state-sponsored forced labor in China.
In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Democratic and Republican leaders from the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and the House Committee on Homeland Security pressed the agency to explain how its implementation of the UFLPA and other U.S. trade laws is preventing the influx of illegally traded goods tied to the persecution of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities.
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"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," wrote lawmakers including Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, Representative John Moolenaar, a Republican from Michigan, and Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon. "Strong enforcement protects human rights, supports American workers, and helps ensure that U.S. businesses are not undercut by illegal and unfair trade practices."
According to the UFLPA dashboard, the value of shipments detained in 2025 and 2026 was $443.11 million, down from $3.19 billion in the prior two years.
The letter arrived just after the fourth anniversary of a landmark United Nations report warning that human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in Xinjiang may "constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity." While independent researchers report that many internment camps in Xinjiang have since closed or been repurposed, state-run labor transfer programs both within and outside the region have effectively replaced mass detention as the primary mechanism of oppression.
Last month, human rights groups urged the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to publicly report on the status of the findings' recommendation that China investigate allegations of forced labor in light of what they say is intensifying state-sponsored forced labor.
"We are concerned by the lack of substantive follow-up," organizations such as Anti-Slavery International, the Clean Clothes Campaign and the World Uyghur Congress wrote in a joint statement. "The assessment called on the government of China to take prompt steps to release all individuals arbitrarily deprived of their liberty and to promptly investigate allegations of forced labor and other abuses. Four years later, there is no credible evidence to suggest that the government of China has taken these steps, and the international community's response remains insufficient."
By the third quarter of 2023, they said, labor transfers reached 3.05 million "person-times"—a metric that counts placements rather than unique individuals—exceeding the 3.03 million total in 2022 and outstripping the Chinese government's annual target by 10 percent. In 2025, transfers climbed again to a record 3.4 million, according to testimony published in April 2026.
"China's own 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) for the Uyghur Region commits to continuing and expanding the state's system of coercive labour allocation for Uyghurs, alongside a data-driven system that tracks and classifies the workforce to enforce continued participation," the statement said. "As these systems change and become harder to detect and verify, they continue to serve the same broader objective of systemic persecution."
Signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021, the UFLPA imposes a rebuttable presumption that all goods made in whole or in part in Xinjiang are the product of forced labor and are therefore inadmissible to the United States under Section 307 of the 1930 Tariff Act.
During the Trump administration's second term, watchdog groups and trade experts have flagged potential enforcement lapses , including a measurable drop in cargo detentions across high-risk sectors such as textiles, seafood and critical minerals, amid what appears to be a shift in priorities toward cracking down on tariff evasion and fraud.
Though Customs and Border Protection has maintained that UFLPA enforcement is a prime concern , the lawmakers argued in their letter that sharp drops in detention activity in key sectors, combined with continued imports from known transshipment hubs and China-linked supply chains, still raised questions about how DHS was setting enforcement priorities, measuring results and identifying gaps in resource capacity.
"Due to Beijing's wide-ranging employment of forced labor transfer programs, it now arises across consumer goods, textiles and apparel, seafood, critical minerals, steel and aluminum, advanced materials and other upstream industrial inputs," they said. "These supply chains can be difficult to trace, particularly when products move through third-country processing hubs, transshipment routes or other intermediaries that obscure the origin of underlying inputs."
It was with this in mind that the lawmakers welcomed the addition of 43 companies to the UFLPA Entity List in July, the slow update of which has been a sticking point for many. At the same time, they said hundreds more firms that should be similarly restricted from exporting to the United States continue to wait for approval.
"Timely designation is essential to preventing circumvention, deterring violative imports and ensuring that the law is fully enforced," the letter said. "If DHS has identified additional resources or authorities needed to strengthen UFLPA Entity List targeting, we welcome the opportunity to discuss those needs."
Referencing recent cases involving Labubu dolls and longstanding vulnerabilities in the seafood supply chain, such as vessel-based labor abuses, transshipment practices and opaque sourcing networks, the letter requested a comprehensive briefing within 30 days.
The lawmakers also want DHS to disclose how it is using artificial intelligence to police existing and emerging supply chains—such as by validating country-of-origin documentation and identifying potential UFLPA violations or shipment-data inconsistencies—and to detail CBP staffing levels for forced labor cases, its coordination with the Justice Department's Trade Fraud Task Force and the extent of its engagements with foreign governments.
Lawmakers framed the effort not only as a moral imperative, but as a direct defense of U.S. economic interests that risk being undermined by slackening oversight.
"We look forward to working with you to ensure that U.S. law is fully enforced, that American markets remain free from goods made with forced labor, and that American workers and industries are protected from illegal and unfair trade practices," it added.
