On February 20, 2025, the media reported that as many as 1,000 Chinese nationals who have been freed from online scam centers in Myanmar will return to China after an international clampdown on the scam operations using persons lured under false pretenses and held by force to work in the scam operations.

On  February 22, 2025, Romanian law enforcement arrested a notorious French fugitive who escaped after a deadly shootout nine months ago. Mohamed Amra, having dyed his hair red, appeared in a Romanian court on February 23.[1]

On February 11, Russia released Marc Fogel as part of a deal negotiated by Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East. A former teacher in a private school attended by Western diplomats and children of the Russian elite, Fogel was arrested on charges of importing medical marijuana into Russia in August 2021. He started serving a 14-year sentence in June 2022. He flew from Russia on Mr. Witkoff’s plane.[1]

On February 20, 2025, the Trump administration transferred 178 Venezuelan migrants who had been detained in Guantánamo Bay to Venezuela for repatriation. 177 of those migrants first flew to an airfield in Honduras, where they boarded a new aircraft headed to Venezuela. One of the migrants was brought back to the United States and is currently being detained in an ICE facility.[1] This transfer comes after Trump announced on January 29 that he would utilize a migrant operations center in Guantánamo Bay to detain up to 30,000 “high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”[2] This controversial decision has been met with backlash and legal concerns.

                On February 5, 2025, the day on which she was sworn in, Attorney General Pamela Bondi issued fourteen memoranda, some of which set the international enforcement priorities of her office. The memoranda change enforcement priorities towards immigration enforcement, the prosecution of human trafficking and smuggling, and disrupting criminal gangs and drug cartels. The memoranda deemphasize the enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)[1] and Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). They also elevate two gang-related Joint Task Forces to the Office of the Attorney General and disband three kleptocracy-related programs and the National Security Division’s (NSD’s) Corporate Enforcement Unit.

On February 10, 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order (E.O.), pausing for 180 days new investigations or enforcement actions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act unless the Attorney General determines that an individual exception should be made.[1]

On January 31, 2025, former senior advisor to the Federal Reserve John Rogers, 63, of Vienna, Virginia, was arrested on charges of committing economic espionage for the benefit of the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”) and making false statement to the Federal Reserve Board. Rogers is alleged to have stolen U.S. trade secrets and shared them with agents of the PRC. He then allegedly proceeded to lie to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of Inspector General for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System during their investigation in a material way. In a statement, Devin DeBacker, head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said, “[a]s alleged, the defendant violated the trust placed in him by the Federal Reserve Bank by putting U.S. trade secrets in the hands of his PRC co-conspirators, knowing full well that such information would benefit the PRC Government and PRC instrumentalities.”[1]

On February 6, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order (E.O.) Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court authorizing economic sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) for pursuing “illegitimate and baseless actions” targeting the United States and Israel, prompting swift condemnation from legal and human rights organizations for attacking the rule of law.[1]

The start of the Trump administration has brought the threat of tariffs and sanctions against two of the closest U.S. allies (Canada and Mexico) as well as China, only to be imposed on China. The tariffs and sanctions were imposed in response to the trafficking of fentanyl in Canada and China and the transnational criminal activity in Mexico. 

The Biden administration’s recent expansion of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) blacklist, which now includes nearly 30 additional Chinese companies, represents the largest enforcement action since the law took effect in 2022. This move underscores the U.S. government’s ongoing efforts to combat forced labor, particularly in the Xinjiang region, where the Chinese government has been accused of systemic human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities. As global scrutiny of forced labor intensifies, this blacklist expansion signals a broader trend in international trade policy—one that increasingly requires companies to scrutinize their supply chains to ensure they are free of human rights violations.[1]