Cameron Knight

cknight@enquirer.com

Sherry Chen wants her job back. It's been more than two years since federal authorities accused her of espionage, after which she was fired from her position at the National Weather Service in Wilmington.

The charges against her were dropped in May 2015, but she remains jobless with mounting legal bills.

"After being painted as a national security threat and having her life turned upside down, all the charges against her were suddenly dropped," the Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus said in a statement Tuesday. "She received no explanation or apology. Instead, the government fired her from her job."

At the federal courthouse in Downtown, an administrative judge of the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board began a two-day hearing Tuesday to decide the merits of her wrongful termination, race discrimination and retaliation case. Chen wants her employment reinstated and her legal fees paid.

Chen's case has drawn support from across the country.

A couple dozen people stood in the freezing cold outside the courthouse in Downtown Tuesday. There were local trustees and engineers shivering alongside others from Iowa, California and other states.

A China Central Television crew came from Washington D.C. to cover the proceedings.

"She's a top scientist, a hard-working scientist," West Chester Township Trustee Lee Wong said Tuesday. "It is wrong to make this kind of accusation, unsupported, wrongfully accuse her, and then drop all the cases before the trial with no apologies or explanation. She had done nothing wrong. She is innocent. She's an American citizen."

Demonstration organizer Michele Young, who ran for congress against Steve Chabot in the past election, explained that Chen worked as a hydrologist for the National Weather Service.

Young said Chen was arrested after a visit to China to see family and friends. She said Chen did share some data with a Chinese associate, but Young said it was public data and only shared with the permissions of her supervisor.

She was charged with four felonies. The government claimed she illegally downloaded information from a restricted government database, the National Inventory of Dams. The charges also claim she made false statements. All the charges were dropped.

Chen's case is one among several other similar cases. Xiaoxing Xi, Guoqing Cao, and Shuyu Li all made national headlines when they were arrested on espionage charges to only later have the charges dropped. In most cases, the government offered little to no explanation about what prompted the arrests or why it was determined the accusations were unfounded.

"The continued lack of transparency or accountability from the federal government for criminalizing, surveilling, and infringing on the rights of these individuals is unacceptable," the Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus said.

For George Weigang, a Norwood engineer, the news about Chen scared him and pushed him to action.

"If injustice happens to one person, it could happen to the next person. If such injustice happens to Sherry, it could happen to me tomorrow. It could happen to my kids," Weigang said. "We need to make sure justice is served for everyone."

He explained that Tuesday demonstration and a second planned for Wednesday are rare among the Asian-American community. He said it it felt good to see everyone coming together.

Weigang and others at the rally, including Wong who served 20 years in the Army, said they think of themselves as Americans first.

"She was not treated as one of us. She was treated as a different citizen," Weigang said. "She lost everything because of nothing."