After Guan Heng was finally granted asylum in the United States in late January, he was not immediately released from detention. The reason, according to at least one report, had to do with the right of the Department of Homeland Security to appeal the decision within thirty days.
It was bad that Guan, who had helped document how the Chinese Communist Party treats Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region of China, was ever detained at all. He had applied for asylum in the United States. But in 2025 he got caught up in an investigation of other immigrants, and the bureaucratic machinery churned away obliviously. Even after it became known who Guan was and that he had applied for asylum, the U.S. continued to keep him in custody.
He should at least have been let go the minute the immigration judge granted asylum. That didn’t happen. Fortunately, though, once his asylum was indeed granted, Guan was not kept locked up for anywhere close to the full 30 days during which Homeland could appeal the decision. He was released on February 3, 2026 (Associated Press, February 4, 2026).
“I’m in a great mood,” Guan, 38, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “I didn’t feel the excitement yesterday. I felt I was still in prison, but today many friends have come to see me.”
Guan, who is staying temporarily in Binghamton, New York, said he has not yet had time to think about what he will do in the longer term.
Hs mother, Luo Yun, who traveled to the U.S. from her home in Taiwan to support her son, said she finally felt relieved.
After filming many of the camps in which many Uyghurs were being imprisoned merely for being Uyghurs, Guan traveled from mainland China to Hong Kong to Ecuador to the Bahamas, where he published his videos of Xinjiang before taking a boat to Florida. Just in case he didn’t survive the boat trip.
Also see:
guanguan: “In Search of Concentration Camps in Xinjiang”
