Guan Heng’s case has drawn international attention after he faced the risk of deportation to Uganda.
A pro-democracy activist who fled China after documenting what he described as concentration camps in Xinjiang was granted asylum on Jan. 28 by a New York immigration judge, amid widespread concern about the risks he would face if deported.
Guan Heng, 38, applied for asylum after arriving in the United States illegally in 2021. He was living in New York state before he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in August 2025.
The case attracted international scrutiny in December 2025, with lawmakers in two dozen countries, including the United States, urging the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to abandon its plan to deport him to Uganda. The agency subsequently canceled the plan.
During Wednesday’s hearing in Napanoch, New York, Judge Charles Ouslander said Guan had a “well-founded fear” of persecution if he were sent back to China because of his video in Xinjiang.
Guan was asked whether he filmed the detention camps and released the video shortly before arriving in the United States to support his asylum case. He said that was not his intent.
“I sympathized with the Uyghurs who were persecuted,” Guan, speaking by video link from the Broome County Correctional Facility in New York, told the court through a translator.
Human Rights in China (HRIC), a New York-based advocacy group that has advocated for Guan’s release, details Guan’s journey from China to the United States. In 2020, he read a BuzzFeed News report on detention centers in Xinjiang and decided to verify it, it said.
In October 2020, Guan traveled to Xinjiang alone. He released most of his video footage on YouTube in October 2021, the same month he arrived in Florida by boat after sailing from the Bahamas, where he had arrived from Ecuador after fleeing China, according to the advocacy group.
HRIC characterized Guan’s video footage as an “extremely rare, first-person, on-the-ground video from a Chinese citizen.”
A month after Guan released his video, Chinese authorities, led by state security officials, began systematically targeting Guan’s relatives in China in what HRIC called “collective punishment.”
Guan told the judge that Chinese police had questioned his father three times since he released the video.
Guan’s attorney, Chen Chuangchuang, argued in his closing statement that his client’s case represents a “textbook example of why asylum should exist,” adding that the United States has both a “moral and legal responsibility” to grant Guan asylum.
By Frank Fang
