Three Americans including two Chinese Americans are back on U.S. soil after being released by China in a prisoner swap.
ABC News reports the three returned to warm embraces from family members overnight at Joint Base San Antonio.
The three are Mark Swiden of Houston and Chinese Americans Kai Li, of New York, and John Leung, a permanent resident of Hong Kong.
Back in September, Li’s son Harrison testified before a congressional committee expressing the urgency of the situation.
“I have now spent a third of my life missing my dad,” Harrison Li said to the Congressional-Executive Committee on China.
Earlier today on X, the son released a statement saying “Our family enthusiastically welcomes the news that Kai has been released from captivity after 3,000 days of wrongful detention, alongside Mark Swiden and John Leong…We ask that members of the media respect our family’s privacy as we navigate the challenges up ahead.”
He went on to thank President Biden and all those involved in the long negotiations for this release.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with the three Americans during their trip back to America.
“I told them how glad I was that they were in good health and that they’ll soon be reunited with their loved ones,” Blinken wrote on X.
Chinese authorities sentenced Swiden to death in 2019 on drug charges. The United Nations called the arrest a “deprivation of liberty.”
Li was arrested in 2016 on espionage charges which the U.S. calls baseless and Lin received a death sentence on similar charges last year.
His daughter Alice told ABC News “For us, this is our first Thanksgiving where we don’t have an empty seat at the table,” Lin said.
An attorney who represented all three families say they will likely be treated at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio to help them reacclimate to a life of freedom.
AsAmNews is published by the non-profit, Asian American Media Inc.
We are currently funded by our readers and such charitable foundations as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, AARP, Report for America/GroundTruth Project & Koo and Patricia Yuen of the Yuen Foundation.’
Find additional content on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram , Tiktok, X, and YouTube. Please consider interning, joining our staff, or submitting a story, or making a tax-deductible donation.
You can make your tax-deductible donations here via credit card, debit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal and Venmo. Stock donations and donations via DAFs are also welcomed. Contact us at info @ asamnews dot com for more info.
