Last October, we covered a disturbing story about the Chinese Communist Party setting up “secret police stations” in other countries. Australia raised the alarm about it first, but there was also one right in New York City, housed in the headquarters of the American Changle Association. At the time, I asked how that could possibly be legal and why we hadn’t done anything about it. A few Republicans in Congress were complaining, but nothing seemed to be happening. Now that’s changed. Two men have been arrested in New York as part of an ongoing Justice Department investigation into the covert police station. They announced separate charges against dozens of Chinese police officials over the harassment of Chinese ex-pats living in America. (Associated Press)

Two men have been arrested on charges that they helped establish a secret police outpost in New York City on behalf of the Chinese government, the Justice Department said Monday.

“New York City is home to New York’s finest: the NYPD,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace, the top federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, said at a news conference announcing the arrests. “We don’t need or want a secret police station in our great city.”

Officials separately announced charges against more than three dozen members of China’s national police, accusing them of creating and using fake social media accounts to locate and harass dissidents in the United States.

The Chinese have continued to describe these stations as “contact points” that are nothing more than a convenient place for their citizens living abroad to do things like renew their passports and take care of other mundane tasks. But previous reports indicate that the secret police stations are being used to harass and intimidate Chinese citizens, particularly those who speak out against Beijing. They are threatened with harm to their relatives living back in China and otherwise intimidated.

The ongoing investigation into the secret police might turn up all sorts of interesting dirt. As I mentioned above, the group was housed in the offices of The American Changle Association. Their Facebook page describes them as a nonprofit engaged in immigration assistance, but they’ve obviously been up to much more than that. The group was blacklisted by the IRS a little over a year ago.

And they’ve had some significant reach in New York City. Last October, they hosted NYC Mayor Eric Adams onstage during their annual gala. (Adams and his staff conveniently forgot to put that on the Mayor’s public schedule and it was only discovered because pictures of him at the party showed up on social media.) The group’s last president, James Lu, donated $4,000 to Adams’ campaign over a two-year period. Other municipal and even congressional Democrats were the recipients of Lu’s generosity as well.

Now that two of the leaders of the secret police are in custody, perhaps we’ll find out precisely what they’ve been up to. Of course, we may not if Joe Biden arranges for a prisoner exchange and sends them back to China. I’m certainly not ruling that possibility out entirely.