Wuhan Ph.D. Student Charged With Smuggling Biological Materials to a University of Michigan Laboratory
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan announced on June 9, 2025, that Chengxuan Han, a citizen of China, had been charged in Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan, by criminal complaint with smuggling goods into the United States and making false statements to federal officers. Han is a doctoral student at the College of Life Science and Technology of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, and had been invited to spend a year as a visiting scholar at a laboratory at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, Michigan.
According to an affidavit by FBI Special Agent Edward Nieh filed with the complaint, between September 2024 and March 2025 Han sent four packages to two people associated with the laboratory, none of them properly manifested and none with the documentation required to import biological materials. The first, manifested as a letter, contained plasmids; the second, manifested as plastic plates, held eight petri dishes with suspected biological material; the third, also manifested as a letter, contained plasmids; and the fourth was a book with an envelope tucked inside its pages holding filter paper drawn with 28 shapes that prosecutors said were labeled in a scheme corresponding to plasmids used in roundworm research. The affidavit said a U.S. Department of Agriculture permit is required to import Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). It also recorded that Han's first application for a J-1 visa was refused on March 18, 2025, and that she was issued the visa after reapplying on March 27.
At about 6:20 p.m. on June 8, 2025, Han arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on a flight from Shanghai, China, traveling on a J-1 visa. During a secondary inspection, Customs and Border Protection officers questioned her; she first denied sending packages and described petri dishes as plastic cups, then admitted she had sent packages containing nematode growth medium and plasmids. Officers also found that the content of her electronic devices had been deleted three days before her arrival. In a later interview with FBI and Homeland Security Investigations agents, she admitted sending the four packages, which contained plasmids she had prepared in her Huazhong laboratory and petri dishes of C. elegans, and admitted making false statements during the border inspection. She also said the two recipients had no advance knowledge of the shipments, and that neither her adviser nor the University of Michigan professor knew about them.
U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon, Jr. said the alleged smuggling of biological materials by Han from a science and technology university in Wuhan, China, to be used at a University of Michigan laboratory was part of an alarming pattern that threatens U.S. security. Cheyvoryea Gibson, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Detroit Field Office, joined in announcing the charges. The FBI, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations are investigating the case. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Stafford signed the complaint on June 9, as case No. 2:25-mj-30370. Prosecutors noted that a criminal complaint is only a charge and is not evidence of guilt.
(Source: U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan)
Source: U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于密歇根州韦恩县底特律市的 Theodore Levin 美国法院大楼，Han 的刑事诉状在此提交。Andrew Jameson 摄，CC BY-SA 3.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: The Theodore Levin U.S. Courthouse in Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan, where Han's criminal complaint was filed. Photo by Andrew Jameson, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
