One hundred and thirteen. FBI Director Kash Patel announced that 113 active spies from foreign countries have been arrested operating inside the United States. Active. Operating. On our soil.
The number alone should end every debate about whether the previous FBI leadership had its priorities straight.
Patel disclosed the figure during testimony, alongside details that make the scope even more staggering. Of those arrests, 62 were Chinese spies removed. The Chinese Communist Party's espionage operations have been running across at least 20 U.S. states since 2021, according to reporting from The Epoch Times. The CCP's intellectual property theft costs American families between $4,000 and $6,000 per year for a family of four, per a February 2025 House Committee on Homeland Security report.
That's money out of your pocket, every single year, while foreign agents operated freely because Biden's FBI was busy arresting Grandma for praying outside of an abortion clinic.
The specific cases are damning. In October 2025, Ashley Joachim Tellis, a State Department senior adviser, was arrested and accused of taking thousands of top-secret documents about U.S. fighter jets and weapons systems. Tellis had been having covert meetings with Chinese government officials in the years prior. Jinchao "Patrick" Wei, a former U.S. Navy sailor with access to classified defense information aboard the U.S.S. Essex was sentenced to 200 months in federal prison for espionage. Wei sold sensitive military secrets-- including technical operating manuals and ship locations—to a CCP intelligence officer. On June 4, the Department of Justice announced that Thomas Weir Pauken II, a 50-year-old American citizen who had lived and worked in China as a journalist, pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered agent for the People's Republic of China. Since at least 2019, Pauken had acted on behalf of the Chinese government recruiting targets, obtaining sensitive information, and attempting to infiltrate U.S. political circles.
Patel framed the crackdown in direct terms. The arrests, he said, mean "our tech stays home and our defense secrets stay locked down." But he wasn't done. "The FBI didn't stop there," Patel told the Senate committee on May 12, 2026. "They forced 62 removals of Chinese spies in 2026 alone."
The FBI also seized 13 internet domains connected to espionage and cyber operations. The sites targeted former U.S. security clearance holders to "work" for them. A blatant attempt to recruit disgruntled government employees and turn them into spies. Patel also referenced an FBI cyber threat alert identifying North Korea as an active cyber threat alongside China's intelligence apparatus. The Chinese Ministry of State Security has been running these operations like a Fortune 500 company — structured, persistent, and deeply embedded.
The Bureau hasn't limited its refocused mission to counterintelligence. Working in coordination with the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI has arrested 4,800 cartel members after designating Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. DEA head Terry Cole noted "significant seizures" of fentanyl in Canada, where cartels have shifted manufacturing and distribution operations. Patel explained the shift bluntly: "The drug traffickers got smart with the securitization of the southern border and moved it up there. So we're tackling that with our seize partners."
The natural question is why these networks weren't rolled up years ago. The intelligence community knew about CCP espionage operations spanning 20 states. The Navy sailor who sold secrets for $12,000 wasn't some criminal mastermind — he was a low-level recruit bought for the price of a used car. The State Department adviser allegedly walked out with thousands of classified documents about our most advanced weapons systems.
These weren't invisible threats. They were the threats the previous leadership chose not to prioritize while it was coordinating predawn raids against parents upset with their local school boards and praying Grandmothers.
One hundred and thirteen foreign spies. Twenty states compromised by CCP intelligence. A senior diplomat allegedly smuggling fighter jet secrets. A sailor bought for $12,000.
The FBI found all of them once it started looking.