Contents

• Background
• Selected U.S. Government Responses
• Outlook and Selected Options for Congress

Background

Foreign government-supported "transnational repression" has been of increasing concern to some U.S. policymakers in the past several years. It is broadly viewed as a human rights issue as well as a form of foreign interference affecting individuals and communities in countries around the world, including in democracies such as the United States.

Definitions and Manifestations. The nongovernmental organization Freedom House, which beginning in 2021 has helped popularize transnational repression as a foreign policy concept of possible concern, has defined it as "governments reaching across borders to silence dissent among diasporas and exiles, including through assassinations, illegal deportations, abductions, digital threats, Interpol abuse, and family intimidation."¹ The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has similarly described transnational repression as referring to "a range of tactics that foreign governments employ to reach beyond their borders to harm, intimidate, threaten, harass, or coerce individuals," with targeted victims "often includ[ing] political dissidents and activists, journalists, political opponents, religious and ethnic minority groups, and members of diaspora and exile communities."² The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) states that "transnational repression denotes acts conducted or directed by a State, or its proxy, to deter, silence or punish dissent, criticism or human rights advocacy towards it, expressed from outside its territory."³ Some debate exists about what the scope of transnational repression entails, such as whether it should refer only to cases in which a victim has a national connection to the repressing government, or whether it should encompass a broader set of cases.⁴

Transnational repression practices often appear to be associated with authoritarian governments seeking to overcome an "illiberal paradox" in which transnational political activism by overseas communities risks destabilizing regimes that may at the same time broadly rely on emigration for economic or other reasons (e.g., remittances).⁵ Freedom House has generally divided manifestations of transnational repression into the following broad categories:

• direct attacks by origin states against individuals abroad, including assassination, assault, physical intimidation, abduction, and unexplained disappearance;
• the co-optation of actors or institutions in other countries to subject a target to detention, rendition, or unlawful deportation, including through alleged abuse of International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) systems;⁶
• mobility controls, such as passport revocations or the denial of consular services, which prevent targets from traveling or cause them to be detained; and
• long-distance threats, such as online intimidation and surveillance or "coercion by proxy" through threats to family members or other individuals associated with the target who remain in their country of origin.

An additional category of increasing concern for some observers is the abuse of tools intended to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism to restrict a target's access to financial services (referred to by some as "financial transnational repression").⁷

In addition to potentially violating the human rights (e.g., rights to life, freedom of expression, and freedom of movement) of direct targets, the use of transnational repression tactics may more broadly serve to engender fear and self-censorship among other members of targeted overseas communities.

Prevalence. The prevalence of transnational repression appears to have increased in the 21^st century due to a variety of factors, including increased global migration and the proliferation of digital communications and surveillance tools. The U.S. Intelligence Community's (IC's) 2024 Annual Threat Assessment report stated, "Foreign states are advancing digital and physical means to repress individual critics and diaspora communities abroad, including in the United States, to limit their influence over domestic publics.... Digital technologies have become a core component of many governments' repressive toolkits even as they continue to engage in physical acts of transnational repression, including assassinations, abductions, abuse of arrest warrants and familial intimidation."¹¹ The same report assessed that governments "are likely to exploit new and more intrusive technologies—including generative [artificial intelligence]—for transnational repression," and noted that at least 74 countries between 2011 and 2023 "contracted with private companies to obtain commercial spyware." The IC's 2025 and 2026 annual threat assessments do not discuss transnational repression.

The State Department, in its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices covering 2024 (the most recent such reports published), describes reports of transnational repression in relation to 51 governments.¹² More expansively, Freedom House has cataloged a total of 1,375 "incidents of physical, direct transnational repression"¹³ allegedly committed by 54 governments between 2014 and 2025 in more than 100 countries.¹⁴ According to Freedom House's data, 10 "origin state" governments were responsible for over 70% of these incidents: the PRC (319 incidents), Turkey (160), Russia (100), Tajikistan (94), Egypt (62), Turkmenistan (60), Cambodia (56), Iran (51), Uzbekistan (51), and Belarus (46).¹⁵ Data shortcomings, such as the likelihood that many cases do not become publicly known, suggest that the actual number of cases may be greater. Nonphysical tactics of transnational repression, such as long-distance threats, are also difficult to quantify and are not tallied by Freedom House at the level of individual cases.

Selected U.S. Government Responses

Public Reports. The State Department began including information on transnational repression in its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices starting with the reports covering 2019. In December 2023, Congress enacted a provision mandating specific reporting on acts of transnational repression within these annual reports.¹⁶ Congress also has required some separate reporting on the misuse of INTERPOL communications (see "Enacted Legislation" below).

Law Enforcement Actions. U.S. federal prosecutors have brought a variety of criminal charges (e.g., relating to bribery, interstate harassment or stalking, kidnapping or murder conspiracy, and acting as an illegal foreign agent) against individuals who may have been involved in forms of transnational repression against persons in the United States.¹⁷ Since February 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has maintained a transnational repression information page on its website, which notes how incidents can be reported.¹⁸ DOJ has engaged in some multilateral coordination with pertinent intelligence and law enforcement officials from partner governments to address transnational repression.¹⁹

Targeted Financial Sanctions and Visa Restrictions. The United States has imposed some sanctions in response to particular incidents of transnational repression. For instance, the Treasury Department has sanctioned 18 Saudi nationals and one entity in response to Saudi officials' 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, Turkey.²⁰ The Treasury Department has also sanctioned a number of individuals in connection with alleged Iranian government-supported plots to engage in transnational repression in the United States and elsewhere.²¹ In February 2021, the State Department announced a general policy (the "Khashoggi Ban"), drawing on Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) authority, allowing for the imposition of visa restrictions "on individuals who, acting on behalf of a foreign government, are believed to have been directly engaged in serious, extraterritorial counter-dissident activities," including against journalists, activists, or other dissidents or their families or close associates.²² According to a December 2024 fact sheet, the Biden Administration took steps to impose pertinent visa restrictions against "over 100 individuals or their family members from Belarus, Hong Kong, Iran, PRC, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, and Venezuela," and over 20 individuals under a separate policy allowing for visa restrictions on individuals connected with the misuse of spyware for repression.²³

Actions to date under the second Trump Administration include March 2025 financial sanctions against Hong Kong officials for having used "Hong Kong national security laws extraterritorially to intimidate, silence, and harass 19 pro-democracy activists."²⁴ Also in March 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a visa restriction policy for "current or former foreign government officials responsible for, or complicit in, the forced return of Uyghurs or members of other ethnic or religious groups with protection concerns to China" and simultaneously imposed restrictions under the policy against unspecified current and former officials of the Government of Thailand in connection with the forced return of Uyghurs in February 2025.²⁵

Technology-Related Restrictions. During the Biden Administration, the U.S. government took several actions to combat the misuse of technology to abuse human rights, including for purposes of transnational repression. The Treasury Department sanctioned some entities in connection with the proliferation of commercial spyware that can be used to facilitate the targeting of dissidents worldwide,²⁶ and in the area of export controls, the Commerce Department added several spyware-related firms to the "Entity List" under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR).²⁷ The Commerce Department subsequently removed a company from the Entity List in October 2024 after it took steps to address the misuse of its technology.²⁸ Separately, Executive Order (E.O.) 14093 of March 2023 prohibited executive branch departments and agencies from using spyware that has been used by a foreign government or foreign person to surveil activists, journalists, and others for purposes of intimidation, to curb political dissent, or to limit freedoms of expression, assembly, or association.²⁹ To date, this E.O. appears to remain in force. In December 2025, the Treasury Department removed sanctions against some individuals who had been sanctioned in 2024 in connection with a commercial spyware consortium, reportedly after they "demonstrated measures to separate themselves" from the consortium.³⁰

Multilateral Diplomacy. The United States has pursued some relevant multilateral efforts alongside like-minded governments, including through joint statements and a jointly developed international code of conduct regarding export controls and human rights.³³ The United States has participated in a working group on transnational repression under the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM), which aims to strengthen G7 coordination to respond to foreign threats to democracies.³⁴ A June 2025 statement by G7 leaders pledged to take several steps to combat transnational repression, including developing a joint "resilience and response framework."³⁵

Foreign Assistance Programs. The U.S. government has funded foreign assistance programs to document and combat transnational repression, as well as programs that broadly provide emergency support to human rights defenders around the world. In January 2025, the Trump Administration initiated a review of nearly all U.S. foreign assistance, pausing assistance programs globally and terminating numerous democracy and human rights projects.³⁶ Some transnational repression-related projects were reportedly among those that were terminated.³⁷ The State Department in July 2026 began soliciting proposals for a project to support research on transnational repression and some other projects of potential relevance to combating transnational repression.³⁸

Enacted Legislation. Recent Congresses have enacted provisions of law specifically aimed at addressing transnational repression. These include a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY2024 (P.L. 118-31) that amended the statutory requirements for the State Department's annual human rights reports to require reporting on transnational repression.³⁹ Also notable is Section 6503 of the NDAA for FY2022 (P.L. 117-81), commonly referred to as the Transnational Repression Accountability and Prevention (TRAP) Act, which sought to address the misuse of INTERPOL databases and processes "in violation of international human rights standards." The act directed the executive branch to support INTERPOL reforms and required a biannual report, for four years, on the abuse of INTERPOL communications, among other provisions.⁴⁰ Congress also has enacted other pertinent provisions, such as those that imposed human rights-related restrictions on department and agency relationships with cyber surveillance firms,⁴¹ and that codified U.S. policy to combat the misuse of commercial spyware.⁴² Additionally, committee reports and explanatory statements accompanying some appropriations laws have included directives related to combating transnational repression.⁴³

Outlook and Selected Options for Congress

Transnational repression may be a persistent challenge in the years ahead, owing to factors such as the increased prevalence and international power of authoritarian governments, the increasing and evolving use of digital technologies and digital surveillance tools globally, and uneven domestic and international responses by governments. Aside from the enacted legislation noted above, some congressional committees/commissions have held hearings focused on transnational repression, and some Members have conducted oversight of executive branch policy responses vis-a-vis particular incidents or foreign governments. Members may engage in further areas of possible oversight, consider additional legislation to modify the U.S. government's policy responses to transnational repression, or both.⁴⁴

Possible Issues for Oversight. Members of Congress who wish to conduct oversight over U.S. policy responses to transnational repression may consider options such as

• seeking information on the extent to which the State Department is raising or considering issues of transnational repression in relations with foreign governments, and on U.S. participation in new G7 efforts to combat transnational repression;
• assessing the use of sanctions to hold accountable individual perpetrators of transnational repression, including the possible merits and downsides of imposing sanctions against "host country" foreign government officials who facilitate transnational repression;
• evaluating the effectiveness of sanctions and export controls in combating the misuse of technology to facilitate transnational repression;
• scrutinizing whether and to what extent U.S. capacity to combat transnational repression has been affected by recent actions such as staffing or organizational changes at pertinent executive branch agencies, terminations of foreign assistance programs, and policy changes affecting migrants;⁴⁵
• assessing the impact of reforms undertaken by INTERPOL to protect against the misuse of INTERPOL systems and U.S. actions to support such reforms;⁴⁶
• assessing U.S. efforts to combat transnational repression affecting individuals in the United States and monitoring implementation of related GAO recommendations;⁴⁷ and
• examining U.S. immigration policies and actions as they relate to U.S. obligations under international human rights law, and the risk that some such policies or actions could facilitate transnational repression.⁴⁸

Pending Legislation. In the 119^th Congress, several pending bills seek to address the issue of transitional repression within the United States and overseas. The Transnational Repression Policy Act (S. 2525/H.R. 4829) would codify a U.S. policy of combating transnational repression; require a State Department-led interagency strategy comprising diplomatic, foreign assistance, and law enforcement elements; authorize relevant training for federal, state and local officials; and require certain outreach and other activities by DOJ. Several other bills aim to bolster efforts to prevent and counter transnational repression within the United States by mandating certain Department of Homeland Security activities.⁴⁹ Other pending bills and resolutions include a focus on transnational repression in relation to particular foreign governments.⁵⁰

Footnotes