The FBI arrested Wanying Zhang at LAX before a flight to China.
She allegedly tracked Taiwan President Lai Ching-te's son and family.
US authorities charged her with secretly collecting intelligence for Beijing.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has arrested a woman accused of spying on the Taiwan president’s family for China on Monday. The woman was arrested at the Los Angeles International Airport as she was leaving the country.
Wanying Zhang, who is also known as Heather, has allegedly surveillanced on the the Taiwanese president’s son and his family for the Chinese government while in the United States. She was taken into custody while heading to a flight bound for China.
Her nationality was not clear, and yet as of now, no lawyer for her could be identified, according to the AP. The woman is scheduled to appear in federal court in Los Angeles on Monday.
Assistant U.S. State Attorney Bill Essayli announced on social media that Zhang, 34, was arrested on charges of acting for China as an unregistered agent. He said Zhang photographed and filmed her targets and passed license plate details to Chinese officials. He further said that Zhang used tradecraft to avoid detection and never notified Washington that she was acting for a foreign government.
The US Justice Department said Zhang worked secretly for Chinese officials to watch the family of Taiwan's leader in the United States. It said she went to Seattle in 2025 on their instructions and later sent them photos, video and licence plate information about the Taiwanese leader's son and his family, Reuters reported.
AP quoted Taiwan’s Presidential Office, which said that relatives of President Lai Ching-te were the targets of the surveillance. The office, however, did not specify whether it was the president’s son, saying that “this is a classic case of transnational repression.”
Taiwan condemns in the strongest terms such barbaric acts, which disregard human rights and national sovereignty and aim to suppress, threaten, or even harm individuals advocating for freedom and democracy or their families, as such behaviour should not be tolerated in the civilized world,” spokesperson Karen Kuo said in a statement.
Taiwan and China parted ways in 1949 after a civil war. Beijing still says the island belongs to it. Lai, who was voted into office as president of Taiwan in 2024, has maintained that Taiwan and Beijing do not belong to each other and that the “People’s Republic of China has no right to represent Taiwan.”
