OAN Staff Abril Elfi
7:10 PM – Monday, June 9, 2025
A Chinese researcher has been arrested after he allegedly tried smuggling biological materials into the U.S. from Wuhan.
On Sunday, Chengxuan Han was arrested soon after landing at the Detroit Metropolitan airport on a flight from Shanghai. She was charged with smuggling goods into the United States.
According to court documents, border officers discovered Han sent four packages that “contained biological material related to roundworms” from China.
The parcels, received in 2024 and 2025, were addressed to persons linked with a University of Michigan laboratory.
According to criminal filings, Han lied to officers by claiming she did not mail parcels to members of the Michigan lab. She also stated the parcels contained plastic cups instead of petri dishes.
Court documents stated Han admitted to shipping biological materials to the lab from her research as a Ph.D. student at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in Wuhan.
Additionally, authorities discovered that Han deleted the content of her electronic device three days before she landed in the U.S.
“The alleged smuggling of biological materials by Chengxuan Han is a direct threat to public safety and national security, and it severely compromises the integrity of our nation’s research institutions,” said Cheyvoryea Gibson, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Detroit Field Office, in a statement Monday.
“I applaud the relentless efforts of the FBI Detroit Counterintelligence Task Force, working in close coordination with U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Field Operations and ICE Homeland Security Investigations Detroit. The FBI in Michigan will aggressively pursue anyone who seeks to harm our country and will deploy every available resource to defend the United States and protect our communities,” Gibson added.
According to court documents, Han had been denied a visa to travel to the U.S. on two separate occasions in March.
In one of her attempts to obtain a visa, Han “could not clearly answer basic questions about herself or her research,” documents stated.
An offer letter from the University of Michigan stated that Han was invited to be a visiting scholar at the lab.
Last week, FBI Director Kash Patel announced that two Chinese nationals have been formally charged following allegations that they smuggled a “dangerous biological pathogen” into the United States, allegedly with the intent to conduct research at a University of Michigan laboratory.
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