The Biden administration Tuesday banned imports from three more Chinese companies in a continued crack down on the use of forced labor of Asia’s minority populations in America’s supply chain.
The Department of Homeland Security “will not tolerate forced labor in U.S. supply chains and will enforce our laws across all industries and sectors,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Tuesday in a statement.
The three companies in China named by the Department of Homeland Security produce seafood, aluminum and footwear goods. DHS said those three industries play an important role in Xinjiang’s economy.
“We will continue to investigate companies that use or facilitate forced labor and will hold those entities responsible,” Mayorkas said while urging stakeholders across industry, civil society and international partners “to work with us to eliminate the scourge of forced labor.”
The call was made by the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force, chaired by DHS, which is comprised of the federal departments of commerce, justice, labor, state and treasury. The office of the U.S. Trade Representative also sits on the task force.
They now join 68 other Chinese companies put on the Uygur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List. U.S. Customs and Border Protection will stop their goods from entering the United States over allegations of using or facilitating forced labor of members of the Uyghur population, including the Kazakh and Kyrgyz people, from the Xinjiang region in northwestern China.
The United States, which has already taken similar actions, has accused China of committing genocide against its Uyghur Muslim population in the northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where Beijing is estimated to have interned about a million of them in concentration camps since 2017.
Shandong Meijia Group Co., Ltd., also known as Rizhao Meijia Group, is based in Shandong Province. They process, sell and export frozen seafood products, vegetables and other quick-frozen convenience food.
Shrimp supply chains have shown “a disturbing pattern of profiting off of the globe’s most vulnerable populations,” according to John Williams, the Florida-based Southern Shrimp Alliance’s executive director.
