Transnational repression has become an increasingly visible public policy issue in the United States, and worldwide, over the past decade. The gruesome 2018 murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, the 2023 assassination of Canadian Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar outside of a British Columbia temple, and the 2025 rendition of Beninese journalist Comlan Hugues Sossoukpè from Côte d’Ivoire highlight the extent to which governments have brazenly targeted their nationals across borders.
Initially, the policy response in the United States occurred entirely at the federal level. But over the past several years, U.S. states have begun to consider legislation on the issue. Not all of this legislation has been adopted, and the U.S. state-level response is clearly in an early phase. As U.S. states continue to respond to transnational repression, it is important that state legislators – and ultimately, members of Congress – understand what the states have done and what can be learned from their various approaches.
One of the challenges of countering transnational repression is that it has not yet been defined in U.S. federal law. The democracy and rights organization Freedom House, which has played a leading role in drawing attention to the issue and in gathering data on it, defines transnational repression as “governments reaching across [national] borders to silence dissent among diaspora and exile communities.” (One of us, Grady, is a research analyst at Freedom House.) Perpetrator governments employ a range of tactics – including assassinations, illegal deportations, abductions, digital threats, and coercion-by-proxy – to intimidate and harass those who pose a perceived threat to the regime. Transnational repression can also involve the abuse by authoritarian regimes of legitimate international legal cooperation mechanisms such as Interpol’s notice system, mutual legal assistance frameworks and counterterrorism financing structures.
The Federal Response
The federal response to transnational repression in the United States has been varied. Numerous congressional committees have held hearings — including multiple hearings by the U.S. Helsinki Commission and most recently, and relevantly, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) June 4, 2026, hearing on “The PRC’s Threats to Americans: Transnational Repression & State-Level Responses.” Federal law enforcement has regularly brought cases against perpetrators, and U.S. congressional offices have introduced several bills on transnational repression, including the Transnational Repression Policy Act (TRPA). Yet, that bipartisan and bicameral legislation, which would codify a formal definition of the phenomenon into law and mandate the development of a government strategy to blunt the threat, has struggled to move on the Hill, given other legislative priorities.
U.S. administrations have also evaded the intent of the most significant U.S. legislation, Section 6503 of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, entitled “Transnational Repression Accountability and Prevention” or “TRAP.” The provisions directed the Attorney General and Secretary of State to provide biannual reports to Congress on authoritarian governments’ misuse of Interpol’s systems, support reforms to prevent such abuse, and develop a coordinated U.S. response to this form of transnational repression. While the required initial report was submitted in August 2022, the TRAP provisions have not produced the sustained reporting, coordinated implementation, or broader accountability that Congress envisioned. The result is that, while the U.S. federal government has done more than any other government to raise awareness about transnational repression, its response has been neither unified nor consistent.
Indeed, the United States and other democracies continue to facilitate transnational repression via their immigration and extradition systems by detaining and deporting dissidents. Part of the challenge is that, precisely because of the widespread participation of democracies in international legal cooperation, it is all too easy for perpetrator governments to abuse these systems to seek the return of exiled activists and dissidents. While those mechanisms require greater transparency and stronger safeguards against abuse, receiving countries must also ensure that they do not detain, extradite, or deport individuals based solely on uncorroborated allegations or requests from governments with a documented history of abusing these systems for political purposes.
By the same token, a great deal of transnational repression occurs outside of immigration enforcement, in the everyday lives of those targeted. Adhering to due process standards when adjudicating claims for asylum, while essential, will not protect individuals from surveillance, harassment, coercion, or intimidation by foreign regimes or their agents inside the United States. These are acts that can be addressed at the state level. Indeed, given the federal structure of the United States, leaving every offense to the federal government to criminalize is neither sensible nor safe. U.S. states, in addition to serving as legislative laboratories, can play a constructive role in responding to the challenge of transnational repression.
State Legislative History and Legal Mechanisms
In recent years, state legislatures have increasingly taken steps to address foreign interference. In general, legislative initiatives have been broad, treating transnational repression, alongside land sales and foreign lobbying campaigns, as increasingly serious national security concerns. These broad approaches have prompted some concerns about the potential for overreach. At a June hearing of the U.S House of Representatives Select Committee on China, the president of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, John C. Yang, cautioned that efforts to address foreign interference must avoid repeating historical instances of national security concerns leading to ethnicity-based suspicion rather than evidence-based enforcement.
Since the beginning of 2025, seven states have adopted laws that explicitly mention transnational repression and enact measures to respond to the phenomenon. While these laws vary to some extent in scope and approach, they reflect growing state-level attention to the problem.
In May 2025, Texas became the first state to pass legislation to counter transnational repression. Senate Bill 1349, signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott on May 24, 2025, and effective on September 1, 2025, criminalizes actions committed by a foreign government or terrorist organization, or an agent working on behalf of these entities, when the acts interfere with Texas residents’ protected conduct under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution or in some way coerce a Texas resident to either work for a foreign principal or to leave the United States. The law also makes it illegal to enforce another country’s laws in the state. The sentencing enhancement for serving a foreign principal can be applied to pre-existing offenses in the Texas penal code, including assault, stalking, and human trafficking. The law also requires the Texas Department of Public Safety to create a training program for Texas law enforcement on common tactics and on the primary perpetrators of transnational repression, and requires the Department, in collaboration with the Governor’s office, to prepare a study on the issue.
While the law identifies how transnational repression infringes on the rights of affected individuals, it takes an overly expansive view of the perpetrators by including terrorist organizations. Unlike terrorist offenses, which usually attack state institutions or the public at large, government-directed campaigns are targeted against particular private individuals who, as individuals, have the rights the law seeks to protect. Moreover, the act incorrectly implies that terrorist organizations stably control territory and are recognized foreign principals.
Soon after Texas passed its law in 2025, Nebraska adopted the Crush Transnational Repression in Nebraska Act. It defines transnational repression as actions committed by a foreign government or terrorist organization, or an agent working on behalf of these entities, “with the intention of harassing, intimidating, censoring, or otherwise extending such principal’s ability to influence, control, or impose such principal’s preferences on the behavior of individuals outside of the principal’s territory or jurisdiction.” Similarly to the Texas measure, the Nebraska law introduces a criminal sentencing enhancement for covered offenses — including first-, second- and third-degree assault, stalking, and violation of a harassment protection order, among others — that interfere with Nebraskans’ protected conduct under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution or that seek to force a Nebraska resident to work for a foreign principal or leave the United States.
In addition to these increased penalties, the act calls on Nebraska State Patrol to create training on cross-border repression tactics and key perpetrators, to establish a website with a multilingual reporting mechanism for targeted individuals, and to prepare a report for the legislature. Certainly, training and multilingual reporting tools are helpful. However, the legislation’s repeated reference to the term “foreign adversary” may increase the likelihood that the implementation process will only focus on governments like China and Iran and overlook transnational repression linked to U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia and India.
Laws in Arizona (2025), Kansas (2026), Louisiana (2026), and Tennessee (2026) share very similar descriptions of transnational repression and policy prescriptions with the legislation approved in Texas and Nebraska. Each of these four states have enshrined in law additional criminal penalties for those acting on behalf of a foreign government or terrorist organization to infringe upon the First Amendment rights of state residents or coerce an individual to serve a foreign government or terrorist group. The four also call for training and awareness-raising programs for law enforcement and, in the case of Tennessee, other state agencies. These laws could serve to heighten awareness of trends and tactics, but like the other states, they risk misdiagnosing the threat by including terrorist groups as perpetrators. Likewise, the use of “foreign adversary” in the Kansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee laws may shift attention away from the rights of all targeted diaspora members and result in states employing the legislation primarily to focus on geopolitical foes of the United States.
Other legislation specifically tasks higher education institutions with protecting students on their campuses from foreign threats. Kansas’s legislation acknowledges the existence of the threat at higher education institutions and directs the University of Kansas and Kansas State University to incorporate information on transnational repression in disciplinary policies and designate a university office or representative to receive complaints. International students and staff often face resistance from their co-nationals who disagree with criticisms of their homeland government or disapprove of events dedicated to human rights issues in the perpetrator country. A March 2026 law in Utah contains a sentencing-enhancement tool for those acting on behalf of foreign governments or terrorist organizations to compel or prevent certain behaviors, and obligates the Utah Department of Higher Education to advise international students of the threat of transnational repression and how to report possible incidents to local law enforcement. Such efforts to provide resources to students, who are often among the most vulnerable and targeted members of diasporas, help promote academic freedom. As these universities roll out bodies to review possible incidents, it is important that those on campus accused of performing such acts on behalf of a foreign government are also afforded due process.
Not all legislative projects related to transnational repression have received the assent of governors upon making it out of statehouses. California Senate Bill 509, which passed through both chambers of the state legislature in 2025, tasked the California Office of Emergency Services (OES) with instituting a transnational repression recognition and response training for state and local law enforcement and first responders. The bill notably lacked reference to individual governments that have sought to silence U.S.-based individuals. However, divisions quickly emerged within and across diaspora communities over the ramifications of the prospective initiative. A broad coalition of groups representing Sikh, Indian Muslim, Indian Hindu, and Iranian communities — all of which have sizable populations in California and have faced increasing transnational repression in North America — argued that the bill would make community members feel safer by raising awareness among police officers. Conversely, other diaspora advocacy organizations such as the Coalition of Hindus of North America and the Hindu American Foundation contended that the legislation would unfairly lead law enforcement to stereotype Hindu Americans as foreign agents. Governor Gavin Newsom ultimately vetoed the bill in October 2025 on the grounds that the state must coordinate closely with federal agencies on codifying definitions and training guidelines and that the OES had already launched a training program for officers.
Somewhat analogous logic underpinned Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’ decision to not sign a transnational repression bill in March 2026. The legislation, Wisconsin Assembly Bill 672, would have established a penalty enhancer like those in other approved laws for anyone operating on behalf of foreign governments or terrorist organizations. It also would have required the Wisconsin Department of Justice to develop a mechanism for reporting cases and a training program for law enforcement. Evers justified his veto by arguing that foreign affairs and international relations fall under the purview of the federal government. The governor further highlighted that the state’s criminal code already prohibits the offenses described in the bill and contains a hate crimes penalty enhancer, and that the legislature had not appropriated sufficient resources for the implementation of the legislation. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee applauded this rejection and registered concern that the bill’s vague language could have enabled the silencing of dissent from certain communities.
Guidelines for Future State-Level Legislation
It is too early to assess the successes (or failures) of state-level legislation on transnational repression and whether these laws are making diaspora activists and journalists safer in the United States. Most states have only considered legislation, not passed it, and even the legislation that has been passed has not been in operation long enough to evaluate. But it is not too early, based on prior research on transnational repression and legislative approaches to it, to set out guidelines for future state-level legislation in the United States.
- Legislation Should Focus on Intent, Not Specific Tactics
One of the most frustrating things about transnational repression is how rapidly it evolves. Authoritarian regimes are quick to capitalize on new technology, explore new avenues of repression, and copy one another after an initial success. The initial abuse of the Interpol Red Notice system, for example, rapidly transitioned into exploitation of Blue Notices and Interpol’s passport database. Counterterrorism financing measures were exploited almost as quickly. Regimes are able to bypass country-based controls by acting in collaboration with one another, as Belarus is accused of doing with Russia. New venues for transnational repression open up regularly: there is, for example, vastly more concern now about it in U.S. higher education than there was a decade ago. All of this suggests that legislation that is focused on one avenue for transnational repression, one location of it, or one national perpetrator will rapidly be outdated. Even if concern about the issue results mostly from concern about one country, the best legislation will be general, focusing on the actions and intents of perpetrators in general.
- Foreign Terrorist Organizations Should Not Be Listed as Perpetrators
Grouping foreign terrorist organizations with foreign governments as perpetrators of transnational repression, as most existing state-level laws do, complicates the implementation of responses and risks infringing upon the rights of individuals in the United States from foreign countries. Many governments weaponize the label of terrorism against targeted individuals to legitimize efforts to intimidate or capture them. Targeted individuals faced terrorism or extremism accusations in about 46 percent of the 1,375 incidents of physical, direct transnational repression identified by Freedom House from 2014 to 2025, according to the organization’s nonpublic dataset. By incorporating vague descriptions of terrorism in legislation, states make it easier for foreign governments to camouflage their politically motivated pursuit of certain individuals to state-level officials who may be less familiar with the contexts related to the countries of origin.
- Transnational Repression Is Not Primarily a National Security Issue
The prestige (and funding) that attaches to issues that are defined as relevant to national security naturally leads advocates to want to define lots of concerns as national security issues. This is understandable and may help place the phenomenon on the agenda of lawmakers, but it does not capture the unique impacts of transnational repression on individuals. On an abstract level, transnational repression involves foreign nations carrying out actions inside the United States that violate U.S. sovereignty, and thus can reasonably be called a national security concern. But on a concrete level, most transnational repression is more akin to violations of privacy, stalking, harassment, or attempted acts of violence than it is to espionage — which is in any case already criminalized at the federal level. While the enacted state-level laws refer to these offenses under penal codes, accompanying press releases and the June CECC hearing connect their passage with broader campaigns to blunt foreign interference in institutions. Opposing transnational repression is fundamentally about defending individuals’ rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. If the perspective of sovereignty helps lawmakers understand the issue, it is useful. However, advancing transnational repression legislation alongside initiatives that tackle other forms of foreign interference (espionage, intellectual property theft, election interference, and lobbying) downplays the everyday harassment of exiled activists and diaspora leaders.
- Legislation Should Be Actor-Agnostic
State laws’ text and their sponsors often pin the problem on “foreign adversaries” as defined by 15 CFR Section 791.4. Such countries include China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. This narrow, geopolitical framing risks ignoring such incidents carried out by notable U.S. allies, including Egypt, India, Rwanda, and Saudi Arabia. The targeting of American citizens and permanent residents such as Sikh political activist Gurpantwant Singh Pannun by India, Rwandan dissident Paul Rusesabagina by his home government, and Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi regime highlights the disregard these governments have for their nationals’ ties to the United States. Focusing only on U.S. rivals reinforces a national security approach that overlooks how transnational repression violates the rights of diaspora members from a diverse range of countries.
- Encourage Reporting and Training
Current state-level legislation promotes training for law enforcement and, in some cases, reporting of transnational repression. These two go hand-in-hand. First responders must have an awareness of the tactics employed by prominent perpetrator governments, and targeted individuals must have the opportunity to report possible incidents in their own languages. State-level law enforcement could follow the example of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has published warnings in Punjabi — although after the recent arrests in California and elsewhere of individuals linked to Indian organized crime and the 2023 assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada, both the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California notably refused to comment on issues around transnational repression, perhaps because raising the issue of transnational repression would directly implicate the Indian government, a U.S. ally. States considering legislation can encourage reporting by creating contact points not only in police departments but also in state and local governments that readily follow up on previous engagements with affected individuals. Individuals may not feel comfortable sharing details with law enforcement due to negative experiences with security services in their homeland or concerns over their immigration status. Thus, institutional liaisons – as Kansas legislation offers university students – may foster improved reporting by targeted immigrants.
Conclusion
The rise of state-level legislation on transnational repression illustrates how U.S. states are laboratories of democracy. To date, seven states have adopted laws in advance of the federal government. And, in most instances, the states learn from, or copy from, other states: much of the state-level legislation is very similar. It would take an in-depth legislative history to reveal the flow of influence from state to state, but the commonalities of this legislation emphasize how important it is to legislate wisely: state-level legislation can have an influence far beyond the borders of a single state.
Whether state-level legislation is the right or wrong approach is ultimately for the states to decide. If state-level legislation can build further awareness of transnational repression and if it can play any role at all in protecting the lives and rights of individuals in the United States, it will have served a useful purpose.
FEATURED IMAGE: (L-R) Stephen Cox, counsel to Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy; Nebraska state Senator Eliot Bostar (D-29th District); Arthur Liu, Chinese dissident and father of figure skating Olympic gold medalist Alysa Liu; and Board Director and former Executive Director of Hong Kong Democracy Council Anna Kwok testify during a hearing before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China at Dirksen Senate Office Building on June 4, 2026 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)