The Justice Department has charged a Democratic official as an agent of a foreign state. According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, Eileen Wang, the Democratic mayor of Arcadia, California, agreed to plead guilty to one felony count of acting in the U.S. as an illegal agent of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Born in China, Wang emigrated to the U.S. with her father, a physician who worked for the University of Southern California, and settled in Arcadia in the 2000s. Wang was elected to the Arcadia City Council in 2022 and became mayor in February of this year. She resigned Monday.

According to her plea agreement, Wang began operating as a CCP agent in 2020 and would promote Chinese interests and pro-China propaganda in the U.S. Alongside Yaoning Sun, Wang operated the U.S. News Center website, which “purported to be a news source for the local Chinese American community,” where she and Sun regularly shared pro-China propaganda at the behest of Chinese government officials.

In one instance cited by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Wang and Sun were given articles to publish that were pre-written by CCP personnel. One of those pre-written articles, later published in the Los Angeles Times, argued that the CCP had not engaged in a genocide in the Xinjiang region of China, where the government is reported to have massacred hundreds of thousands of ethnic and religious minorities. Wang and other Chinese agents posted the article on their websites and shared the link with their CCP handler, who responded, “So fast, thank you everyone.”

In another instance, Wang shared screenshots with her CCP handler showing that the pro-China and pro-CCP propaganda she had posted had generated more than 15,000 views. When her handler praised her work, Wang replied, “Thank you, leader.” Wang even collaborated with China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, recommending propaganda pieces to be proliferated and editing propaganda essays. Wang’s colleague, Sun, is currently serving a four-year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2025 to acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government. Another of Wang’s collaborators, CCP intelligence official John Chen, was sentenced in November 2024 to 20 months in federal prison after pleading guilty in the Southern District of New York to acting as an illegal foreign agent and conspiracy to bribe a public official.

“Individuals in our country who covertly do the bidding of foreign governments undermine our democracy,” said First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli in a statement. “This plea agreement is the latest success in our determination to defend the homeland against China’s efforts to corrupt our institutions.” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg added, “Individuals elected to public office in the United States should act only for the people of the United States that they represent.” He continued, “It is deeply concerning that someone who previously received and executed directives from PRC government officials is now in a position of public trust at all, but particularly so because that relationship with that foreign government had never been disclosed.”

FBI Counterintelligence and Espionage Division Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky said, “Let this serve as a clear warning: Individuals who act on behalf of foreign governments to influence our democracy will be identified, investigated, and brought to justice.” He continued, “Protecting the rule of law and the transparency of our democratic process remains at the core of the FBI’s mission, and we will continue working alongside our partners to safeguard the integrity of our elections and keep hostile actors from undermining the voices of the American people.” The FBI is continuing its investigation into Wang’s actions and the presence of other illegal foreign agents in the U.S.

According to a local NBC News affiliate, Arcadia has a high population of Asian immigrants. U.S. Census Bureau data shows that in 1980, Arcadia’s population was 88% white and less than 4% Asian. As of 2020, less than 18% of the city’s population is white, while Arcadia’s Asian population has risen to nearly 65%.

In recent years, Arcadia has become a hub for a quiet but burgeoning birth tourism industry catering to Chinese nationals. Last year, local police reached out to the FBI for assistance after discovering a residence housing at least 21 children, almost all of whom had been born via surrogacy. The residence’s owners, Silvia Zhang and Guojun Xuan, were arrested. “There are no laws against hiring multiple surrogate mothers at a time,” Kallie Fell, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Bioethics & Culture Network, told NBC News at the time, “but as we can see, this case highlights inherent dangers of commercial surrogacy.”

Zhang and Xuan were also charged with child endangerment; their residence was rigged with security cameras, and footage showed at least six different nannies tending to the children, and in many cases abusing the children. One infant was violently shaken and struck by a nanny and was hospitalized two days later.

Multiple reports have warned that Chinese nationals, including influential CCP officials, are taking advantage of current U.S. law to award their children “birthright citizenship,” leading to a rapidly-growing birth tourism and surrogacy industry. Over 500 Chinese firms offer birth tourism programs and packages so that the children of Chinese nationals can attain U.S. citizenship and, when they turn 18, vote in U.S. elections and participate in and influence U.S. politics.

Commenting on the charges leveled against Wang, investigative reporter Andy Ngo asked, referring to the birth tourism business in California, “Do you remember that last year an investigation was launched into a Chinese baby factory in Arcadia?” He added, “That city needs to be thoroughly investigated for systematic Chinese infiltration.”