Prostitution

New Homeland Security Task Forces Target Immigrants Over Sex Work

The Trump administration is protecting Americans from an invasion of illicit handjobs.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown | 7.8.2026 11:06 AM

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(Illustration: Adani Samat/Lori Martin/Dreamstime)

The Trump administration claims that its new Homeland Security task forces are here to protect Americans from an "invasion" by undocumented immigrants and thwart terrorist organizations, foreign cartels, and transnational gangs. So why are they targeting immigrant asylum seekers—who are in the country legally—over sex work?

To be fair, this seems to be a minor part of the task forces' business. Much of the time, they've been waging a drug war against American citizens, as I reported last month.

Today, I want to focus on one case that didn't make it into that piece. It's the case that turned me on to the shams that are these new Homeland Security task forces, and it involves an old preoccupation of federal law enforcement: Asian immigrant–owned massage parlors.

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"Four Chinese nationals indicted on charges of human trafficking, immigration violations, and money laundering," the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania announced in January. At first, it seemed like a standard massage-parlor prostitution bust. But then I got to this language:

This prosecution is part of the Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) initiative established by Executive Order 14159, Protecting the American People Against Invasion. The HSTF is a whole-of-government partnership dedicated to eliminating criminal cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations, and human smuggling and trafficking rings operating in the United States and abroad. Through historic interagency collaboration, the HSTF directs the full might of United States law enforcement towards identifying, investigating, and prosecuting the full spectrum of crimes committed by these organizations, which have long fueled violence and instability within our borders. In performing this work, the HSTF places special emphasis on investigating and prosecuting those engaged in child trafficking or other crimes involving children. The HSTF further utilizes all available tools to prosecute and remove the most violent criminal aliens from the United States.

That's some serious rhetoric. Was there, perhaps, more than just adult prostitution going on here? Or was this just the feds leveling up their anti-immigrant propaganda? If you guessed the latter, you may be a realist about how law enforcement operates.

In this case, the feds had indicted one dead person. So that brings our actual number of defendants down to three.

These three defendants—Shuhua Qiu, Chunlong Lin, and Lijuan Zhao—were all legal immigrants, according to U.S. Attorney Paul Sellers.

Qiu, a licensed massage therapist, had been in the country for 16 years and was granted political asylum from China. Zhao petitioned for asylum years ago but was still awaiting a decision.

Prosecutors allege that Qiu, Lin, and Zhao owned and managed two spas where sex acts sometimes took place alongside regular massages. That's all.

The defendants are not alleged to have used force, or to have smuggled illegal immigrants into the country. They're not alleged to be part of a........

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