US Says Enough! FBI Targets Alleged Chinese Immigrant Welfare Fraud, 100+ NYC Senior Centers Probed

Ice? Can you please? Are you guys ice? Yes. Can you call 911 please? A video of a Chinese woman being arrested by ICE at Los Angeles International Airport on October 3rd spread widely in Chinese communities. It shows the woman, who appears to be around 40, pushing a white suitcase along the curb outside the airport when agents arrest her. Frightened, she asks a man passing by to call 911. He asks the plainclothes agent why they're arresting her. One of them says she's suspected of an immigration violation. Agents eventually handcuffed the woman and put her in a van. As she gets in, she tells the passerby her name, Jing Zhao. The video sparked widespread discussion among Chinese Americans. Some social media users said Zhao has an MBA and works at a special education school focused on language development in Irvine, California. She provides special education for children with language delays. Pro-democracy activist Chang Guodong wrote, She used to be my older son's early intervention teacher. Her English is very fluent, almost at a native speaker's level. She is also a senior staff member there, a supervisor who leads a team. She is even from my hometown. Does anyone have advice for someone in her situation? The central issue is whether she is in the country illegally or has overstayed her visa. If neither applies, the immigration court will release her. If either does, she will face legal proceedings. Large numbers of federal agents have also appeared suddenly in several Chinese neighborhoods in New York, adding to anxiety among local immigrants. Federal and local law enforcement agencies launched coordinated raids on social adult daycare centers on the morning of October 20th. The centers are suspected of involvement in health care fraud and kickback schemes. The searches covered Flushing, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and other parts of New York City. Security footage from a nearby store shows at least eight officers at the scene. Some wore jackets marked HSI for Homeland Security Investigations. One search took place at Jala Adult Daycare Center, near 8th Avenue and 40th Street in Brooklyn. Video show federal agents repeatedly entering and leaving the center, carrying out boxes. Some were clearly marked, evidence. Officers also appeared a few blocks away at Wenxin Home Adult Daycare Center at Fort Hamilton Parkway and 51st Street. Witnesses saw investigators carry out several bags of items. New York City is said to have more than 600 registered daycare centers. Flushing alone has 64 senior centers within a one-mile area, the highest concentration of such centers in the country. Industry sources see the ICE raids as the start of a broader crackdown. The newspaper World Journal reported that an older Chinese American in Flushing, using the pseudonym Mr. Huang, attended a local senior center for nearly a year. He said he saw seniors receive regular cash payments and suspected that his signature and service records had been misused. Huang said he left the center in late January this year. Staff then contacted his wife, saying they wanted to settle up with him. They gave him $14,450 in cash and told him under threats not to tell anyone. Huang said he has not touched the money and is willing to hand over all of it if investigators need it. The Brooklyn centers known to have been searched include Wenxing Home Adult Day Care Center at 5118 Fort Hamilton Parkway and Jala Adult Day Care Center at 4022 8th Avenue. Industry sources say both are run by the same Chinese owner. Anonymous industry sources say some day care centers and participants have long operated under an unwritten system of illicit payments. They see the raids as one phase of a long-running investigation into vulnerabilities in New York State's large Medicaid program and federal Medicare program. One industry source, who asked not to be named, said rumors have circulated that law enforcement is encouraging seniors to provide tips and may even be recruiting them to help investigate. The source could not confirm those reports. He said investigators generally need concrete evidence before taking further action. Industry sources say agencies also sent warning letters to several centers on October 20th, the day of the raids. The letters focused on billing and claims records. Operators were given a deadline to provide documents proving compliance. Those unable to provide records or explain their claims could face aggressive efforts to recover payments. The warning sharply heightened anxiety across the industry. Fox News also reported that officials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, made more than 80 visits across the city and sent warning letters to operators. CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz personally visited Flushing to deliver warning letters to Kent Senior Care and Evergreen Adult Daycare. In an interview, Oz also claimed that people linked to what he called Chinese gangs paid some seniors $1,000 to $1,200 to take part in false billing claims. A Fox News reporter saw several seniors enter Kent Senior Care without immediately signing in. Staff later began asking arriving seniors to sign. Oz questioned the center's assertion that it strictly tracked attendance, saying its actual practices were inconsistent. From 2018 to 2024, the local population of seniors eligible for Medicaid grew by only about 20 percent, yet the number of seniors these centers billed Medicaid for rose 390 percent. In other words, the number of people listed in claims grew far faster than the local population of eligible seniors. That helps explain why federal and state authorities began focusing on the industry. In February this year, the Justice Department charged two men from Flushing with using one pharmacy and two adult daycare centers to defraud Medicare and Medicaid of about 120 million U.S. dollars. As federal enforcement expanded, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the state was also investigating suspected health care fraud. She said, we are targeting providers we believe engaged in illegal activity ranging from money laundering to kickbacks to improper billing and other fraudulent activities. Hochul warned anyone trying to steal taxpayer money, we will find you, we will prosecute you, and we will hold you accountable. The investigation could reach far beyond the center's search that day. State figures show New York has more than 400 such facilities, serving about 45,000 Medicaid beneficiaries at an annual cost of more than 500 million U.S. dollars. New York State stopped approving new adult daycare centers in July this year. The pause will last at least through January 2027. Governor Hochul has now gone further, directing the state health department to submit recommendations by December 31st this year on how to reform the program. The raids have shaken senior care services in Chinese communities because some daycare centers, long-term care organizations, and participants have long been connected through a complex network of questionable financial arrangements. The schemes extend beyond inflated daily attendance at daycare centers into other health benefits. Industry sources describe a common home care scheme involving false hours and a 50-50 split. Agencies work with caregivers and seniors to list caregivers who never actually show up. They bill the federal government for those hours and split the government payments with seniors. Some pharmacies are also suspected of trading benefit balances on over-the-counter medication cards. Others buy vitamins or injectable medications that seniors receive free, then resell them for cash. The controversy comes just over two weeks before the November 3 midterm elections. It has renewed attention to ties between senior centers, local politics, and community groups. Some community members say operators have used their access to large numbers of seniors to influence voting. They describe dedicated transportation, small financial incentives, and even instructions on completing mail ballots. Sometimes they even fill them out for seniors, including showing them where to mark a particular candidate. Those issues are separate from the health care investigation. Gift card theft at American supermarkets has become more serious in recent years. Many shoppers find that cards they have loaded with money are already empty because the funds were quickly stolen. Police say gift cards have become a new target for organized crime. Many gift card fraud rings are made up of Chinese people. These groups have operated extensively for years and defrauded countless victims. The Department of Homeland Security launched a special operation called Project Red Hook to combat the problem. One case drawing widespread attention involves a Chinese couple, 22-year-old Cao Yuanliu and 26-year-old Chen Linghan. They were charged with conspiring to commit gift card fraud. A federal grand jury in Fort Pierce indicted the couple on October 14, 2025. They tampered with large numbers of gift cards at more than 40 grocery stores across South Florida, including St. Lucie, Martin, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties. One store's surveillance system captured Liu and Chen leaving in a black Bentley SUV with New York plates. Liu and Chen were charged with conspiracy and possession of 15 or more counterfeit or unauthorized access devices. Court records say they entered a grocery store's gift card section on December 16, 2024. They carefully opened the packaging, recorded or removed the card's serial numbers and pins, then resealed the packages to make them look untouched. They quietly returned the altered cards to the shelves. When unsuspecting customers bought the cards and loaded money to activate them, Liu and Chen could access the accounts remotely and drain the funds. Throughout the process, victims had no idea the gift cards they bought had already been tampered with. The next day, officers searched Liu and Chen's home under a warrant and seized a large number of gift cards. They also recovered fragments the couple had tried to flush down the toilet. Investigators conducted another search for the Bentley SUV in December 2024 and found more gift cards. Investigators have identified 42 grocery stores in Florida as victims of the scheme. If convicted, Liu and Chen face up to 15 years in prison. Gift card fraud cases involving Chinese nationals have become common in recent years. In April 2025, three Chinese nationals were sentenced in New Hampshire to prison terms ranging from 24 to 60 months. They belonged to a Chinese transnational criminal organization and took part in gift card fraud. The proceeds were used to buy expensive electronics that were shipped to China. All three will be deported after serving their sentences. In March that year, 32-year-old Chinese national Liao Donghui was sentenced in Florida to 33 months in prison. He pleaded guilty in December 2024, admitting he possessed more than 6,100 unauthorized gift cards worth about 1.9 million U.S. dollars. Also in March, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Kentucky announced charges against four Chinese nationals suspected of gift card tampering. Two defendants, Lin Caomin and Chen Tianlong, were arrested in October 2024 after being seen returning gift cards to a Kroger store in Louisville. Project Red Hook continues nationwide. The Department of Homeland Security is pursuing the criminal network and urging financial institutions and retailers to strengthen monitoring so American consumers' everyday purchases do not end up funding international money laundering. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has expanded enforcement at airports nationwide in recent months, with arrests rising significantly. Those detained include green card and asylum applicants whose visas had expired. Lawyers say the number of cases heard daily in immigration court has tripled. ICE's expanded airport enforcement is no longer limited to people with final deportation orders. Some overstayers of visas previously considered low-risk may also be arrested, even while waiting for decisions on asylum, green cards, or other immigration benefits. Tensions rose outside a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, application support center in Los Angeles County, California. A local community organization reported that an Asian mother and daughter arrived at the center that morning for fingerprints, photographs, and other biometric processing. They were reportedly taken away by ICE officers at the site. The account spread quickly through Chinese communities in the San Gabriel Valley near Los Angeles. Application support centers are routine public government offices, where immigrants complete required steps for green cards, status adjustments, and other applications. If the account is accurate, even applicants following legal procedures and cooperating with government requests could face unexpected enforcement action. Immigration enforcement in Fresno and surrounding areas has increased significantly since early October this year. Local immigrants' rights groups estimate that federal officers detained at least 100 immigrants in just three days. Another immigration case has sparked widespread discussion in Chinese communities. It involves Wei Jialiang, a Chinese man in Hawaii. He entered the United States in 2015 and has lived here for 11 years. Over the years, he built a stable restaurant business with multiple locations in Hawaii, operating legally. He has no record of criminal offenses or civil violations. He and his wife have settled in the United States and are raising two U.S.-born children. His mother has also been granted asylum. With a stable, close family, he was widely seen as a Chinese immigrant who had built a successful life in America. That stability ended on August 19th this year. Wei flew on Alaska Airlines from Hawaii to Harry Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. As he got off the plane and prepared to leave, five ICE agents surrounded him. They detained him on suspicion of being in the country illegally and took him directly to a detention facility. Many people wondered why he was suddenly arrested despite having no criminal record, running a legitimate business, and having family members with legal status. The key issue was a serious flaw in his asylum application. According to information disclosed in court, Wei entered the United States in 2015, but did not apply for asylum until 2022. By then, he was well beyond the deadline set by U.S. immigration law. Federal prosecutors have focused on that issue throughout the case. Maybe your first reaction was to wonder how ICE knew which flight he was taking. Internal ICE records obtained by Reuters show that from Donald Trump's return to office through February 2026, the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, gave ICE information on more than 31,000 travelers. That led to more than 800 arrests. As ICE steps up enforcement, airports have become places where immigrants without legal status are arrested, putting aviation hubs nationwide under growing pressure. Several U.S. immigration lawyers have warned people with unresolved immigration issues to avoid airports for now.