US Escalates Search for Forced Labor Ties in Textiles From China

The US Department of Homeland Security is increasing scrutiny on textile imports as worries over forced labor in China hang over the apparel industry.

The department plans to expand a list of entities that it says use forced labor from the Xinjiang region of China, and is also increasing Customs and Border Protection package inspections to root out violations of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and other laws. The moves demonstrate a renewed effort to give more bite to the two-year-old law on Uyghur labor, which assumes any product made with goods even partially sourced from Xinjiang involves forced labor unless a company can prove otherwise.

“It’s important to protect American workers and American businesses that are playing by the rules in manufacturing textiles, and it’s important for the American people to know that the goods that they’re buying are not being made complicit in human rights violations,” said Robert Silvers, under secretary for policy at DHS, in an interview this week with Bloomberg Law.

The enforcement boost comes amid bipartisan efforts to counter China as an economic and national security threat, as well as to encourage manufacturing closer to home. But challenges in cracking down on forced labor remain as millions of packages—including from Chinese fast fashion companies—flood into the US every day.

Homeland Security has pledged to expand the Uyghur barred entities list that points to companies the agency says mine, produce or manufacture goods from forced labor in Xinjiang. There are currently 30 entities on the list that companies must avoid in their supply chains, but that number “is going to grow dramatically and in short order,” Silvers said.

“We are going to be growing the entity list very significantly over the course of 2024,” Silvers said. “We are committed to holding to account every company around the world that traffics in or profits from the use of forced labor.”

There are still hurdles to overcome as DHS moves to ramp up enforcement, Silvers said. He said the agency has been speaking with members of Congress with the goal of securing more resources for inspections, including technology. A document detailing CBP’s 2025 financial year budget request says the agency has asked for an additional $19.9 million for Uyghur forced labor enforcement that will be used for “staffing, technology, strategy and outreach, and training.”

“In the meantime, we’re not slowing down at all,” Silvers said.

Inspecting Packages

Homeland Security announced a new textile enforcement plan in April to target a range of violations from products made with forced labor to counterfeit clothing.

From June 2022 to April 2024, more than 8,000 shipments with a combined value of $3.17 billion have been stopped for potential Uyghur law violations, according to Customs and Border Protection. The shipments were mainly from Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and China and spanned electronics, apparel, agricultural produce and industrial materials.

US government and media reports show that Uyghurs and other Muslim citizens have been held in prison camps in Xinjiang and forced to harvest cotton, for example. China has repeatedly denied that it is committing such human rights abuses.

Lawmakers including Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) have shown particular interest in broadening the banned entity list to include many more problematic suppliers. “The entity list is a big deal for me,” he said at a Capitol Hill hearing earlier this year.

“DHS is taking steps in the right direction when it comes to UFLPA enforcement,” Ivey said in an email this week. “I encourage the continued efforts to build out that list and signal to industry execs that forced labor is not acceptable.”

Apart from expanding the entity list, the textile enforcement plan said CBP will heighten screening for packages claiming an exemption known as “de minimis” that allows shipments with a value of less than $800 to enter the US without Customs declarations or duties.

DHS said it will ramp up its screening through “expanded targeting, laboratory and isotopic testing, and focused enforcement operations.” Isotopic testing can help determine whether raw materials like cotton originated from Xinjiang or not.

The CBP budget request for FY2025 said the agency “will sustain, develop, and deploy increased supply chain tracing capabilities,” noting that funding will go to hiring scientific analysis specialists and to “sustain country-of-origin identification capability.” The “initial focus will be on country-of-origin cotton, and the plan will include expansion to additional commodities,” the document said.

Silvers said the private sector appears to be taking the agency’s enforcement efforts seriously. “Forced labor is now a top tier compliance issue for companies,” he said.

“We have engaged extensively with the trade community since the UFLPA went into effect two years ago,” he said, “and I think it’s very clear that companies have gotten the message that they are responsible for knowing their own supply chains.”

But the forced labor issue is a moving target, according to Thea Lee, deputy undersecretary for international affairs at the US Department of Labor. Lee said this week at a hearing for the Congressional-Executive Commission on China that Uyghur forced laborers and other minorities in Xinjiang have been moved to work in other parts of the country, although it’s difficult to monitor how much this is happening.

American Textiles

The US textile industry, feeling intense pressure from Chinese e-commerce fast fashion giants like Shein and Temu, has had particular concerns about Uyghur forced labor and the de minimis rule. Lawmakers in public letters have pressed the Chinese shopping platforms to explain how they avoid using goods made with forced labor.

US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas met with a trade group, the National Council of Textile Organizations, earlier this year to discuss how companies that violate the Uyghur law or other importing rules are hurting US businesses.

“DHS will use all the tools at its disposal, including identifying suspicious trans-shipment practices, publicly identifying bad actors, isotopic testing, random parcel inspections, and other law enforcement efforts, in order to protect the integrity of our markets, hold perpetrators accountable, and safeguard the American textile industry,” Mayorkas said in a January press release about the meeting.

Kim Glas, president and CEO of the US textile group, said that while the commitment for increased screening is important, she thinks more can be done. Her group has called for an end to the de minimis rule so companies can’t use it as a loophole to move illegal shipments into the country.

“There’s Xinjiang cotton that’s sitting in our drawers and being delivered to our doorsteps,” she said in an interview.

Fourteen textile manufacturing plants in the US have closed in recent months, Glas said, adding that she believes duty-free fast fashion products are one of the predominant causes.

“I worry what this industry is going to look like at the end of this year without immediate solutions,” she said.