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Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) is pushing a crackdown on illegal Chinese government-run police outposts that operate in the United States, one of his first moves since assuming the chairmanship of the Senate’s intelligence panel last week, National Review has exclusively learned.

Cotton’s Expel Illegal Chinese Police Act, introduced earlier today, targets the Chinese regime bureaucracy aimed at conducting subversive repression activities on U.S. soil.

The bill, a copy of which was obtained by NR, would kick off a sweeping assault on Chinese political influence activities in America linked both to the police station network and to broader activities overseen by the United Front Work Department.

It would revoke the visas of Chinese government and CCP personnel operating police stations and other illicit outfits in the U.S.

The bill would also impose full blocking sanctions on Chinese law enforcement agencies involved in setting up illegal outposts in the United States, and it would make their employees ineligible for visas to enter the United States.

It would target the U.S. presence of the United Front Work Department, a powerful bureau that promotes the Chinese Communist Party’s interests among those who do not possess party membership. The department is known to oversee chapters of groups in America that promote the annexation of Taiwan, illicit technology transfer efforts, and other activities that advance Beijing’s interests.

In 2023, the FBI arrested two men in Manhattan who operated one of those police stations on behalf of Fujian province’s ministry of public security. Chen Jinping, one of the defendants in that case, pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese regime in December. The Justice Department’s prosecution against the other man, Lu Jianwang, is ongoing. Lu and Chen are both U.S. citizens.

The human rights nonprofit Safeguard Defenders, which revealed the existence of the New York outpost, identified in 2022 at least two additional outposts that have been reported in Chinese state media sources to operate in the U.S. The group found that Wenzhou, a city on Zhejiang province, was reported to operate the outposts in New York and Los Angeles, though their precise addresses and current statuses remain unknown.

The Chinatown police station at the center of the Justice Department case operated from the office of the America ChangLe Association, a local club for immigrants from the ChangLe district of Fujian’s capital city, Fuzhou.

The introduction of Cotton’s legislation, which he initially introduced last year, comes amid a broader reckoning with Beijing’s vast efforts to wield influence in political circles at all levels of government across the U.S. Last year, federal prosecutors also brought charges against Linda Sun, a former aide to governors Kathy Hochul and Andrew Cuomo, alleging that she acted as an unregistered agent for China’s government and the CCP.