FBI Task Force Targeting Transnational Repression Across US: Patel

WASHINGTON—Multiple criminal networks involved in transnational repression on U.S. soil have been dismantled by the FBI, director Kash Patel said.

Criminals involved in transnational repression are acting on behalf of hostile foreign governments, Patel said in an interview with Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders” aired on Aug. 8.

“They’re doing it across America, and we’ve been able to shut down a lot of these networks that are infiltrating America through public spaces, the internet, social media platforms, and also trace back who’s doing it,” Patel said. 

The FBI’s Philadelphia field office created a first-of-its-kind task force in January 2025 to focus on addressing the threat.

The FBI defines transnational repression as efforts by foreign governments to “intimidate, silence, coerce, harass, or harm” members of their diaspora in the United States. Tactics include stalking, online disinformation campaigns, cyberhacking, assault, attempted kidnapping, as well as threats against a target’s family members and friends.

Those typically targeted include political and human rights activists, dissidents, journalists, and members of religious or ethnic minority groups, according to the FBI.

At a congressional hearing in September 2025, Patel identified communist China as the United States’ most significant national security threat.

The task force consists of 22 federal, state, local, and community partner agencies, including the Philadelphia Police Department, the National Park Service, and campus police departments, the FBI said in March this year.

Its mission has included training area law enforcement to identify and respond to transnational repression, improving responses to suspected cases, and raising public awareness about the issue, according to the FBI.

The FBI also announced at the time that in just over a year of operations, the task force had identified more than 50 victims of transnational repression.

Patel said the FBI’s goal is “a disruption, a dismantlement, or a prosecution.”

However, the actors behind the transnational repression are not necessarily based in the countries where they might be expected to be, the director said. 

“When we can’t legally get to them, or we can’t get enough evidence to meet the threshold for prosecution, we work with our partners again, at places like Treasury and elsewhere, to shut off their access to the international banking system, which they need to conduct their criminal activity,” Patel said. 

Sanctions imposed by the State Department and Treasury Department are equally as powerful, he added. 

“And when you do that, it’s as effective as putting handcuffs on them, essentially, because they can’t do it anymore,” he said. “That’s a win.”

Actions by Communist China

In March last year, the State Department sanctioned six Beijing and Hong Kong officials, citing transnational repression on U.S. soil and the erosion of the China-ruled city’s autonomy. Among them was Dong Jingwei, the former vice minister of China’s Ministry of State Security, its top espionage agency.

The ministry has played a central role in targeting Chinese dissidents and running covert influence operations overseas, including in the United States. In 2023, 34 of the ministry’s officers were charged in New York for alleged transnational repression schemes, including creating thousands of fake online personas on social media platforms to target Chinese democracy activists and critics of the Chinese Communist Party.

In early 2025, two Chinese nationals and a retired New York Police Department sergeant-turned-private investigator were sentenced between 16 months to two years for their roles in a Beijing-directed campaign to pressure a former Chinese official living in New Jersey to return to China. 

In May, a Chinese American accused of running a secret Chinese police station in New York City was convicted of acting as an illegal foreign agent for China. He was also convicted of obstructing justice by deleting WeChat messages documenting his communications with his contact at China’s Ministry of Public Security.

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China, in a report published in June, noted that what were once “scattered incidents” of China’s transnational repression and malign influence operations have evolved into a “growing global challenge.”

“Ultimately, for me, the prize is actually putting handcuffs on them,” Patel said.