Trump to ask Xi to free wrongfully detained US citizen as wife speaks out

Yugang Rong and Sylvia Zin, wives of two Americans held in China, urged President Donald Trump on "Fox & Friends" to intervene in their husbands' cases before his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Family members told Fox News that Trump intends to raise the detention of Dr. Youlin Chen directly with Xi. Chen, a nuclear and seismic researcher, and Min Zin, a Myanmar scholar, are the only two U.S. citizens in China the State Department has designated as wrongfully detained.

Chinese agents took Chen from outside the Beijing airport in November 2024, according to a website devoted to securing his release, and reportedly seized his phone, iPad, laptop and cameras while repeatedly accessing his email accounts and devices. He was charged with espionage but has not been tried after more than two years in custody, and has had no contact with his family. Rong said her husband is "the father of my son" and that she and their child "terribly miss him."

Rong believes Chen's research is behind his detention. His work applies geophysical methods to monitor nuclear activity using regional earthquake data gathered partly through cooperation with Chinese scientists, and one of his published reports used such methods to detect North Korean nuclear tests.

Summarized by PolitiKool from Fox News’s reporting. Read the full story at Fox News →