Former Biden Climate Czar Apparently Pushed Mayorkas To Ease Up On Chinese Company Linked To Slave Labor
- December 17, 2024
Nick Pope, Daily Caller
Then-national climate adviser Gina McCarthy appears to have met directly with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in 2021 to urge him to ease up on a Chinese solar company linked to slave labor, according to documents obtained by Protect the Public’s Trust, a government watchdog group.
A pre-meeting primer prepared for Mayorkas by staff to get him ready to meet with McCarthy in June 2021 states that McCarthy would “likely discuss the concerns the solar industry has regarding the Department’s enforcement posture on solar products, particularly with regard to Hoshine Silicon Products Company.” The meeting, which McCarthy requested, was scheduled to take place several days after DHS issued a “Withhold Release Order” (WRO) to customs officials to begin seizing shipments of Hoshine solar products because of its connections to slave labor in China’s Xinjiang region, an area known as ground zero for the Chinese government’s genocidal repression of Uyghur Muslims.
DHS still lists Hoshine Silicon Industry and its subsidiaries as entities manufacturing products that use slave labor in violation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
“DHS made a rational and moral judgement about products from a company and a nation that uses the forced labor of Uyghurs and other ethnic and political prisoners,” Michael Chamberlain, executive director of Protect the Public’s Trust, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “But it seems human rights are a secondary consideration for the people charged with implementing the Biden administration’s green agenda and their counterparts in the clean energy industry. It’s hard to see what’s ‘clean’ about solar panels made with slave labor.”