An Indiana University researcher will be deported following his sentencing for smuggling plasmid DNA of E. Coli bacteria.
Youhuang Xiang was arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in November last year. He was accused of receiving the pathogen E. coli concealed in a package listed in shipping documents as containing women's underwear.
He was charged with two counts of smuggling and one count of making false statements to law enforcement. Xiang, a Chinese citizen, has been in federal custody since then, and his student J-1 visa was terminated.
Xiang was sentenced to one year supervised release, a $500 fine and a $100 “special assessment” fee. Xiang was also ordered to be removed from the United States to China.
The maximum sentence is 20 years imprisonment, a fine of $250,000 and up to 3 years of supervised release.
On March 2, Xiang signed a guilty plea agreement, in which he agreed to a written order of removal to China, and the United States Attorney’s Office “agreed it would recommend a sentence of time served.”
According to a sentencing memorandum filed by Xiang’s attorney, James D. Tunick, Xiang requested the court sentence him to time considered served with no term of supervised release.
Xiang was a postdoctoral fellow employed by IU professor Roger Innes, a microbiologist. The lab was one of the two IU biology labs the FBI searched in January.
The Indiana University Bloomington Association of University Professors (IUB-AAUP) issued a press release after sentencing, stating “Dr. Xiang’s is the third conviction of a Chinese postdoctoral scholar on false and overblown charges of ‘bioterrorism.’ In all three cases there was no evidence of any ill will toward the U.S.”
The previous two convictions were from researchers at the University of Michigan.
The IUB-AAUP said “Indiana University has shown itself a willing participant in the harms done to its students and faculty by the FBI and other Trump Administration agencies. This assistance includes immediate firing of scholars without due process… We call on the Indiana University upper administration to protect all IU scholars from Trump Administration harassment: for moral reasons, for the betterment of U.S. technological leadership, and for academic freedom.”
