WASHINGTON (Al Jazeera) – Nearly 100 members of Congress are calling on the U.S. Attorney General to investigate the Justice Department’s alleged racial profiling of Asians.
“Racial profiling is both illegal and corrosive to our democracy,” according to the letter seen by Al Jazeera.
“Over the years, multiple people who happened to be of Asian descent have been falsely accused by the Department of Justice of espionage,” it said.
Axios reported that the letter was delivered on Thursday.
“The common thread in every one of these cases was a defendant with an Asian surname – and an innocent life that was turned upside down,” according to the letter.
The letter also called for “implicit bias training” for the agency.
The move comes after the Justice Department moved last week to drop all charges against a Chinese researcher arrested last year over visa fraud in its “China Initiative” that aims to prevent the transfer of U.S. technology.
Tang Juan, a visiting researcher at the University of California Davis School of Medicine was arrested in July last year for allegedly concealing her military affiliation.
In a filing with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, prosecutors said they were moving to dismiss the indictment and vacate the trial, but gave no reasons.
The step comes after the defense called for the case to be dismissed, based on recently disclosed evidence of a report by FBI analysts that questioned if the visa application question on “military service” was clear enough for Chinese medical scientists at military universities and hospitals.
At least five Chinese researchers were arrested last year over the issue and two are still in jail.
Civil liberties groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Asian Law Caucus, have voiced concern about the cases, saying they reflect anti-China bias.