• Made contacts to urge detailed reporting on all communities suffering persecution in China. From Beijing to Tibet, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is engaging in a violent crackdown on religion. The CCP is executing a well-documented campaign of oppression targeting Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities under the guise of combating terrorism. The CCP has instituted pervasive surveillance measures in the Uyghur Region-collecting DNA and biometric information, restricting religious observance, and instituting the forced detention of an estimated 800,000 to 2 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in so-called re-education camps. In the meantime, the persecution of other religious communities, including Falun Gong, The Church of Almighty God and other Christian communities, escalated significantly in East Turkestan. The crimes associated with this campaign include unlawful detentions, enforced disappearances, torture, extrajudicial killings, religious persecution, forced labor, and sexual assaults. The situation in China provides the U.S. government with an opportunity to stand for persons of all faiths suffering persecution in China. We are now looking into a variety of policy measures to hold China accountable, including using Global Magnitsky sanctions to hold the violators of religious freedom in China accountable.
• Made a contact to ask for the commutation of the sentence of Herman Jacobowitz, a federal prisoner who can safely be sent home and supervised by a probation officer. Mr. Jacobowitz is a highly esteemed member of his community with a large family that has suffered in his absence. He was a first-time, non-violent offender who has acknowledged his crimes and has always been remorseful. He is now 60 years old and has served almost 11 years-more than 2/3-of his 15-year sentence. He has been a model prisoner and is a minimum-to-no-risk of recidivating. Research and evidence clearly demonstrate that community supervision is the most cost effective way to supervise low-risk, low-need prisoners. The current cost of community supervision is much lower than federal prison. According to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the average annual cost to supervise a person in the community is $4,392 as opposed to $34,770 to imprison a person. Creating supervision savings would free up resources for the Department of Justices critical law enforcement and national security missions.

Duration: October 2, 2018 to March 29, 2019

General Issues: Foreign Relations, Law Enforcement/Crime/Criminal Justice

Spending: about $40,000 (But it's complicated. Here's why.)

It can be tricky to figure out how much an organization spent on a particular lobbying engagement. The law only requires lobbyists to report the amount they were paid for federal lobbying each quarter rounded to the nearest $10,000—and if it's less than $3,000 in a given quarter (or less than $13,000 for organizations with in-house lobbyists), they don't have to disclose it at all. Plus, some organizations include spending that doesn’t belong in the report—for instance, money spent lobbying state governments or other legal work.

Agencies lobbied since 2018: State - Dept of (DOS), U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, U.S. Senate, House of Representatives, White House Office