To get my father, Xiaoxing Xi, FBI twisted America's ideals: Joyce Xi The lives, rights and reputations of loyal Chinese Americans should not be sacrificed in hunt for spies.

Joyce Xi | USA TODAY

This is not the America I thought I knew.

I did not know FBI agents could wake my family in the early morning and enter our home, point guns at my mother, sister and me, and forcefully drag my father away in handcuffs without real evidence of a crime. I did not know they could then obtain a search warrant to flip through our entire home and seize our belongings, including some of my little sister’s things. I did not know the government could restrict my father’s freedom for months and force him to fight for his innocence with only false and reckless claims against him.

My father is Xiaoxing Xi, who was charged by the federal government for passing U.S. technology secrets to China. Many labeled him a spy. He faced the threat of 80 years in prison and a $1 million fine. But my father never shared secrets with China. Underlying the FBI’s key argument was a blatant factual error — the technology involved in my dad’s communications was not the sensitive technology they claimed it was. World-renowned scientists, and even a co-inventor of the technology, supported the fact that the FBI’s incriminating "evidence" was wrong.

Inevitably, there are human lives impacted by such accusations. For months, my family has been living under a cloud of suspicion. We’ve had to limit conversations with dear friends and colleagues. We’ve lived without a sense of privacy, knowing the FBI could be monitoring our every move. We’ve hid inside our home away from windows while reporter after reporter knocked on our door. We've watched live news feeds from our front yard saying my dad sold secrets to China. We’ve had our finances drained for legal fees, had to borrow from relatives and take out loans. We still have not been able to pay my college tuition. The day-to-day stresses of this reality, the sadness, tears, frustration and confusion wore us down.

My father’s case reflects some of America’s most cherished ideals gone wrong. My father is a hard-working, innocent American who was presumed guilty. He devoted his life to academic research, for the sake of understanding the world around us better and contributing to his university and country — America. He had all that taken away from him in an instant.

There is no escaping the geopolitics of our time and the influence that tensions between the U.S. and China have in our society today. Recently, the government has raised the specter of economic espionage with much attention on China. But as our country faces increased anxiety over China, the government is targeting innocent Chinese Americans.

This comes at the heels of the case of Sherry Chen, a Chinese-American scientist accused of espionage only to have charges dropped. It hearkens back to case of Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese-American scientist put in solitary confinement and widely labeled a spy while investigators never actually linked him to espionage. There have been other recent cases of irresponsible government overreach against ethnically Chinese scientists.

Chinese spies and hackers surely exist, and those cases should be dealt with vigorously. But there are millions of Chinese Americans who are loyal and working hard to improve this country. No American should be held under suspicion because of his or her race, ethnicity or national origin. And the government should not level such serious charges or restrict the rights and freedoms of people without great care.

We still do not know why this happened. We do not know why the government started watching my father, and why they arrested him before consulting fully informed experts. This was a surprise my family never could have imagined.

We must find out the backstory to this case and others like it. Our ordeal was preventable, so let’s ensure this never happens again. We can do better, America.

Joyce Xi is the daughter of Xiaoxing Xi, the physics professor recently accused by the federal government of being a Chinese spy. The Justice Department dropped criminal charges against Xi on Sept. 11, 2015.

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