Red Carpet for Xi, Force in the Streets: What Happened to Free Speech in Washington?

Red Carpet for Xi, Force in the Streets: What Happened to Free Speech in Washington?

As the United States welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping with military honors, a state dinner and elaborate ceremony, protesters criticizing his government were pepper-sprayed, beaten, dragged and confronted by private security personnel on the streets of the American capital. The identities and affiliations of some of those involved remain unanswered questions.

By Miami News-Digest

WASHINGTON — Inside the White House, Chinese President Xi Jinping received the full ceremony of an American state visit.

Outside, people denouncing his government were getting pepper-sprayed.

That contrast may become one of the most consequential and least examined aspects of Xi’s September visit to Washington.

On September 24, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump welcomed Xi Jinping and Peng Liyuan for a state visit featuring a military review, performances by ceremonial units of the U.S. armed forces, a flyover by a B-2 Spirit and four F-22 Raptors, formal meetings, an official state dinner and other events showcasing American hospitality.

The White House later called the visit “historic” and described it as a demonstration of American strength and diplomacy. President Trump presented Xi with a bald-eagle statue, describing the eagle as an embodiment of America’s “free and soaring spirit.”

Yet beyond the official ceremonies, a profoundly different scene was unfolding.

Over three days, Chinese democracy activists, Tibetans, Hong Kong activists, Falun Gong practitioners and other critics of Beijing reported being surrounded, pepper-sprayed, struck, choked, dragged, beaten or deprived of banners and protest materials during confrontations with pro-Beijing participants and unidentified dark-clothed personnel.

Some of the protesters attacked were U.S. citizens, according to activists interviewed by Human Rights in China.

And video reviewed by Miami News-Digest shows personnel visibly marked as employees of ICS Protective Services — a private American security company with a longstanding relationship with the Chinese Embassy — physically participating in crowd-control activity during one of the confrontations.

What remains unresolved is potentially more significant than what is already visible.

Who were the masked individuals repeatedly appearing beside pro-Beijing crowds?

Who employed them?

Who hired ICS for its deployment during the demonstrations?

What legal authority did private guards have to physically control political demonstrators?

And why, amid one of the most heavily secured diplomatic events in Washington, were people apparently able to repeatedly assault those protesting a visiting foreign government?

Those questions go beyond a dispute between rival demonstrators.

They concern whether people standing in the capital of the United States could freely condemn an authoritarian foreign government without being subjected to physical intimidation or violence.

Two Washingtons

The official images from September 24 are carefully composed.

Xi and Trump inside the White House.

Military formations.

American flags.

The Silent Drill Platoon.

A state dinner in the East Room.

A presidential toast calling for “harmony, peace, and success.”

The visit also included an event at the National Archives — the institution housing the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights — as the United States marked its 250th anniversary.

Outside those ceremonies were people exercising rights represented by those documents.

Human Rights in China, which conducted an extensive review of videos and witness accounts from September 23 through September 25, reports that protesters displayed messages including “Xi Jinping Step Down” and demands for freedom, democracy, human rights and rule of law in China.

The protests included Chinese dissidents, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Hong Kongers and others critical of the Chinese Communist Party.

HRIC says more than 3,000 protesters participated at different points during the visit, while approximately 100 overseas Chinese associations participated in organized welcoming activities for Xi.

Groups reportedly arrived on charter buses from New York, Philadelphia and elsewhere. Pro-Beijing organizations distributed flags, meals and other logistical support.

Supporting Xi, waving a Chinese flag or publicly praising the Chinese government is every bit as lawful in the United States as condemning him.

The issue is not political viewpoint.

The issue is violence.

Pepper Spray, Umbrellas and Men in Black

According to HRIC’s reconstruction, trouble began on September 23 outside Joint Base Andrews, where Xi arrived.

Video reviewed by the organization reportedly shows individuals entering the anti-Xi protest area, filming protesters, seizing materials and using a metal flagpole wrapped in a Chinese flag to jab demonstrators.

The confrontations intensified the following day.

HRIC identified protesters Geng Guanjun, Hu Pizheng, Huang Mingfa and Guo Jianxin as people who reported being pepper-sprayed. Protester Niu Pengfei was reportedly surrounded, choked, beaten and dragged by several people dressed in black.

HRIC says footage from different locations repeatedly shows people with remarkably similar appearances and behavior: dark clothing, baseball caps, masks, sunglasses or earpieces, and, in some cases, long black umbrellas.

They moved among welcoming crowds, filmed protesters and appeared to rapidly converge when physical confrontations began.

A woman wearing a light-colored baseball cap, sunglasses and a face covering is shown in footage carrying what HRIC identifies, based on video and witness accounts, as a pepper-spray device. Witnesses told the organization that she sprayed several democracy activists.

Another video sequence shows a demonstrator raising an arm and shouting before being grabbed. Several dark-clothed individuals then converge, overpower the demonstrator and physically carry the person from the immediate area.

HRIC has described those people as suspected security personnel associated with the Chinese side.

But even HRIC’s own investigation leaves their precise identities unresolved.

That distinction matters.

Their clothing, equipment and coordinated movements may justify investigation. They do not, standing alone, establish that the individuals were employees of the Chinese government, members of Chinese intelligence services or personnel under the command of the Chinese Embassy.

What the videos establish is conduct.

Determining command, employment and state affiliation requires additional evidence.

Then There Is ICS

Miami News-Digest reviewed video from one of the confrontations in which personnel displaying prominent ICS markings are clearly visible.

The ICS personnel are not merely standing behind a distant security barrier.

In the footage reviewed by this publication, ICS-marked personnel are physically embedded in the crowd and use their arms and bodies to control movement as masked and dark-clothed individuals operate in the same immediate area.

Long black umbrellas are also visible during portions of the confrontation.

At other points in the footage, individuals dressed in tactical or official-looking clothing can be seen nearby. The video available to Miami News-Digest is not sufficiently clear to reliably identify their agency, and this publication is therefore not attributing those personnel to the National Guard, Secret Service, Metropolitan Police or another agency without additional evidence.

ICS’s connection to the Chinese Embassy itself is not speculative.

Federal court records describe ICS as a company providing “24/7 private security” for the Chinese Embassy and its staff, with a relationship dating to 2003.

That history becomes particularly relevant because this is not the first time ICS has been accused in federal court of physically confronting Chinese-government critics.

A Troubling History

In Yang v. ICS Protective Service, human-rights activist Jin Yang alleged that she and others attempted to film a protest outside the Chinese Embassy in September 2022.

According to the allegations summarized by U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, Yang and her group complied when Metropolitan Police instructed them to relocate.

Yang nevertheless alleged that security guards associated with the Embassy approached protesters with long-handled objects.

Her complaint alleged that the pointed end of an umbrella came close enough to touch her eyelashes.

ICS asked the court to dismiss Yang’s assault-and-battery claims.

The judge refused.

McFadden emphasized that the allegations still had to be proven, but ruled that an alleged swipe with an umbrella could plausibly constitute threatening or offensive physical contact and allowed the assault-and-battery claims against ICS to proceed.

The significance of that case is not that it proves wrongdoing in Washington in 2026.

It does not.

But the factual resemblance is difficult to ignore: allegations involving Chinese-government protesters, the Embassy’s private security contractor, physical efforts to move protesters and umbrellas used during confrontations.

Another federal case raised still more serious allegations.

Shuguang Chen, a longtime critic of the Chinese government and lawful permanent resident of the United States, sued ICS after two 2022 confrontations outside the Chinese diplomatic compound.

According to Chen’s complaint, an ICS security guard struck and threatened him during one incident.

During another, Chen alleged that a senior Chinese diplomatic official grabbed and threw his cellphone into the road while an ICS guard watched.

Chen alleged that the ICS guard then spoke with the Chinese official, restrained Chen, handcuffed him and provided information that resulted in Chen being criminally prosecuted.

Those charges were later dropped.

A federal judge allowed portions of Chen’s lawsuit to proceed beyond the motion-to-dismiss stage. As with the Yang case, those allegations should not be confused with final findings of liability.

They nevertheless establish something important:

The intersection between Chinese diplomatic personnel, an American private security contractor and political demonstrators has already produced significant federal litigation.

What Authority Did Private Security Have?

That question takes on additional importance when private guards physically interact with demonstrators.

Washington distinguishes ordinary private security officers from commissioned Special Police Officers.

According to the Metropolitan Police Department, ordinary security officers possess no arrest authority.

Special Police Officers do possess limited arrest authority — but MPD says that authority is generally restricted to the property they are contracted to protect.

They have no general police authority in public space except under limited fresh-pursuit circumstances.

That makes several facts critical.

Were the ICS personnel captured on video ordinary security officers or commissioned Special Police Officers?

What property were they contracted to protect?

Were the people they physically controlled standing on that property or in public space?

What offense, if any, had those individuals allegedly committed?

Who hired ICS for that particular deployment?

And what instructions were ICS personnel given concerning political demonstrators?

Those are factual questions, not accusations.

But they are questions that should have answers.

Arrests — But of Whom?

Washington police confirmed five protest-related arrests on September 24 involving allegations that included assault on police, simple assault and taking property without right.

HRIC says it subsequently confirmed through attorneys that all five arrested individuals were anti-Xi demonstrators.

One, Pi Qiaohai, was later transferred to immigration custody, according to HRIC.

As of HRIC’s September 29 report, the organization said it could find no public record of corresponding criminal prosecutions of pro-Beijing participants accused of assaulting anti-Xi protesters during the Washington events.

That does not establish selective prosecution.

Police and prosecutors may possess evidence unavailable to the public, and each arrest must be evaluated on its own facts.

It does, however, present an obvious accountability question when multiple videos appear to document pepper spraying and physical attacks while the publicly known arrests fall on one side of the political divide.

The Diplomatic-Immunity Question

One of the most serious allegations involves a person whom police reportedly declined to arrest.

According to HRIC, the Hong Kong Democracy Council reported that police told representatives of Students for a Free Tibet that at least one suspected assailant could not be detained because that person possessed diplomatic immunity.

Activist Samuel Bickett separately reported that police said the individual was associated with Xi’s diplomatic team.

Neither the State Department nor another authoritative government source has publicly identified that individual or confirmed the circumstances described by the activists.

The allegation therefore remains unverified.

But if accurate, it raises an extraordinary question: whether someone connected to an official foreign delegation allegedly engaged in physical violence against political demonstrators and then avoided ordinary law-enforcement action because of diplomatic status.

Diplomatic immunity exists to allow diplomats to perform official functions without coercion by a host government.

It is not, as a matter of public policy, intended to turn Washington streets into a zone in which politically motivated violence becomes inconsequential.

The State Department should clarify what happened.

America Already Knows Transnational Repression Is Real

These concerns do not arise in a vacuum.

In June, the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China released a report describing what it called an expanding system of Chinese transnational repression targeting critics and diaspora communities beyond China’s borders.

The commission identified physical violence, threats against relatives, surveillance, censorship, forced repatriation, lawfare and other methods used against critics overseas.

Its report specifically warned that such activities threaten rights and sovereignty in the United States and other democratic nations.

The Justice Department has independently prosecuted and charged numerous cases alleging covert Chinese-government activity inside the United States.

In 2023, federal prosecutors charged dozens of officers of China’s Ministry of Public Security in schemes allegedly designed to harass and intimidate U.S.-based critics of Beijing.

In May 2026, a federal jury convicted a New York man in connection with operating an undeclared overseas Chinese police station in Manhattan.

And on October 5 — less than two weeks after Xi’s Washington visit — the Justice Department announced the arrest of a California woman accused of acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government and conducting surveillance on relatives of a senior Taiwanese official living in the United States. Those allegations remain pending in federal court.

None of those cases proves that the people confronting protesters in Washington were Chinese agents.

They establish something narrower but important:

The possibility of foreign-directed surveillance, intimidation or coercion targeting critics of Beijing inside the United States is not a hypothetical scenario invented by protesters. It is a documented national-security and law-enforcement concern.

San Francisco Had Already Provided a Warning

There was another reason American authorities had reason to anticipate trouble.

When Xi visited San Francisco for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in 2023, competing demonstrations also descended into violence.

A subsequent investigation by the Hong Kong Democracy Council and Students for a Free Tibet reviewed more than 2,000 photographs, videos, police records, medical documents, messages and witness accounts.

It documented 34 incidents of alleged intimidation, harassment or assault.

HRIC says some organizers involved in the 2023 pro-Beijing mobilization subsequently appeared during the 2026 Washington visit as well.

The Chinese government and diplomatic missions have disputed allegations connecting official Chinese institutions to organized violence and have accused anti-Beijing demonstrators of provocation and aggression of their own.

That competing account deserves acknowledgment.

So does the recurrence of violence.

After San Francisco, Washington authorities knew — or reasonably should have known — that a visit by Xi could bring thousands of fiercely opposed demonstrators into close proximity and that previous demonstrations had resulted in assaults.

Yet three years later, videos again show umbrellas, pepper spray, masked individuals, violent confrontations and anti-Xi protesters alleging that people associated with the pro-Beijing contingent targeted them.

This Is About American Freedom, Not American Citizenship

Some of the demonstrators may be American citizens.

Others are immigrants, permanent residents, visitors or people whose citizenship has not been publicly established.

Constitutionally, that distinction misses the larger point.

The streets of Washington are not supposed to require political conformity as the price of personal safety.

The First Amendment protects political expression and peaceful assembly from governmental suppression. Private assault does not automatically become a constitutional First Amendment violation merely because the victim was speaking politically.

But physically attacking someone because of what that person is saying is nevertheless an attack on the exercise of free speech in the ordinary and civic meaning of the term.

And when such violence occurs in the presence of government security personnel, questions about police response, viewpoint neutrality, public safety and protection of lawful assembly become unavoidable.

The core American principle is uncomplicated:

A person standing peacefully in Washington should be able to praise Xi Jinping.

The person standing beside him should be able to call Xi a dictator.

Neither should be pepper-sprayed, punched, dragged away or threatened because of that belief.

The Image America Projected

There is an uncomfortable symbolism in what occurred.

During the state visit, the White House gave Xi a bald-eagle statue and explained that the eagle represented America’s “free and soaring spirit.”

Outside, some of Xi’s critics were trying to exercise precisely that freedom.

They carried banners.

They shouted slogans.

They condemned China's government.

They demanded democracy, Tibetan freedom, Hong Kong freedom, human rights and political change.

And some were met with force.

That does not mean President Trump, the White House or American authorities directed or approved that violence.

There is presently no evidence establishing such a conclusion.

Nor does the evidence presently establish that every masked individual seen confronting demonstrators was an agent of the Chinese state.

But neither uncertainty eliminates what the videos show or the questions they raise.

The United States went to extraordinary lengths to protect Xi Jinping.

Military personnel participated in his ceremonial welcome.

Roads were closed.

Security fencing surrounded his hotel.

Law-enforcement and protective agencies established extensive security perimeters.

The machinery of the American government successfully protected the visiting head of state.

The harder question is whether that same system adequately protected the people standing outside criticizing him.

Questions Still Unanswered

The violence in Washington deserves more than social-media clips and competing accusations.

It deserves an investigation capable of answering straightforward questions:

Who were the masked individuals repeatedly appearing around pro-Beijing crowds?

Were any employees, contractors or agents of the Chinese government?

Were any members of Xi’s official delegation?

Were any connected to overseas Chinese organizations involved in organizing the welcoming crowds?

Who retained ICS Protective Services for its September deployment?

What authority did ICS personnel have to physically control protesters?

Were ICS personnel operating exclusively on property they were legally assigned to protect?

Did police document uses of force by private security personnel?

Was a suspected assailant actually protected by diplomatic immunity?

If so, what happened after the alleged assault was reported?

Why were anti-Xi demonstrators arrested while HRIC reported finding no corresponding public prosecutions of individuals accused of attacking them?

And did American security agencies adequately prepare for violence despite the lessons of San Francisco in 2023?

Those questions do not require hostility toward China.

They require allegiance to a far older American principle.

The government can welcome whomever it chooses to the White House.

Diplomacy sometimes requires ceremony with governments whose political systems and values differ profoundly from our own.

But the red carpet cannot extend so far that Americans — or anyone else lawfully standing on American soil — must surrender the freedom to criticize the person walking across it.

For three days in September, the United States displayed extraordinary hospitality toward Xi Jinping.

The people outside his motorcade were testing something different:

whether America remained equally committed to protecting the freedom to tell him he was not welcome.

The videos from Washington make that question impossible to dismiss.