A federal judge has stripped a married couple of their US citizenship after they were convicted of stealing medical trade secrets and transferring them to China. On March 30, Judge James E. Simmons Jr. of the Southern District of California ordered the denaturalisation of Li Chen and Yu Zhou, ruling they failed to meet the "good moral character" requirement for citizenship due to their criminal conduct. The couple, originally from China, had pleaded guilty in 2020 to conspiracy to commit theft of trade secrets and wire fraud. According to the US Department of Justice, they stole proprietary biomedical technology from a US-based employer and used it for personal financial gain and to benefit the Chinese government.
The DoJ stated the case aligns with a policy shift under the second administration of President Donald Trump to aggressively pursue denaturalisation in cases involving serious non-terrorism-related crimes. Unlike previous administrations that focused denaturalisation efforts on terrorists or human rights abusers, this approach extends the legal mechanism to economic crimes. The department described the move as part of a broader strategy to "maximally pursue" revocation where legally permissible. US Attorney General Pam Bondi said that allowing individuals to retain citizenship after committing crimes against American interests amounts to an abuse of the immigration system. Chen and Zhou are the first known individuals to face denaturalisation specifically for trade secret theft tied to a foreign government.
When Pam Bondi frames citizenship revocation as a response to "abuse" of the immigration system, it signals a broader recalibration of who is considered truly "American" — not just by birth or naturalisation, but by loyalty and conduct. The denaturalisation of Chen and Zhou for economic espionage, not violence or terrorism, marks a precedent: white-collar crimes with geopolitical consequences now carry the same weight as more traditional security threats. This case isn't just about stolen technology — it's about the conditions under which belonging is revoked in America. The message is clear: citizenship can be undone not only for overt acts of terror, but for quiet betrayals in lab coats.
