A Chinese Community Party member was barred from entering the United States and had his visa revoked after trying to visit his daughter, raising concerns that Washington may introduce a travel ban against tens of millions of Chinese people and their family members.

A Chinese woman who had immigrated to the U.S. said her father, a retired cadre of the Chinese Communist Party, was denied entry into the country at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on Sept. 17, U.S.-based pro-democracy activist Zheng Cunzhu told Apple Daily.

Immigration officials at the airport sent him back to China after an extended period of questioning, and canceled his valid 10-year visa, Zheng said. The man, who was also applying to immigrate to the U.S. to live with his daughter, also had his immigration application rejected.

Zheng said it would become more difficult for Chinese people hoping to immigrate to the U.S., let alone visit their family or travel, as bilateral relations between the U.S. and China have worsened over trade policies, the national security law in Hong Kong and espionage allegations directed at China.

He feared that U.S. officials had already begun acting on a proposal to introduce travel restrictions for Chinese Communist Party members, a plan that was first reported by the New York Times in July. The article said that the Trump administration was considering denying visas to more than 90 million Chinese people in a draft presidential order, but has yet to be made.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stopped short of confirming NYT’s report at the time, but said: “We’re working our way through, under the president’s guidance, about how to think about pushing back against the Chinese Communist Party.”

Zheng, who was a student leader in China’s 1989 pro-democracy movement, said it was an unspoken rule that party members, or those who had left the party for less than two years, would have their immigration application rejected.

The U.S. had previously been relaxed about allowing Chinese people to immigrate to the U.S. in the past decade, he said, in a strategy that hoped Western values would influence party members. But that has since changed as Washington has increasingly taken a tougher stance against China in the lead-up to the upcoming presidential election, even affecting Chinese students who want to study in the U.S.

“Some Chinese students steal relatively high-end technology from America and other Western countries, with some even becoming spies after arriving in the U.S., that’s why visas for Chinese students who major in sensitive subjects or industries are strictly controlled,” Zheng said.

He said there has been a wave of prospective Chinese immigrants and students quitting the Communist Party recently, some even placing ads in newspapers as proof.

The U.S. has not made public the number of Chinese Communist Party members that have been denied entry into the country. There are close to 92 million party members as of 2019, an increase of 1.3 million compared to the previous year, according to the Organization Department of the Chinese Communist Party.

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