The Department of Homeland Security, on behalf of the interagency Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force, announced Friday the addition of 43 entries to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List—a 30 percent increase and the roster’s largest expansion yet of companies targeted by the United States over the persecution of Muslim minorities in China’s Xinjiang region.
The move also marks the first update to the Entity List since the close of the Biden administration in January 2025, a lapse that human rights groups criticized for undermining enforcement efforts, lagging behind open-source evidence of ongoing abuses—which Beijing has denied—and coming amid a reported decrease in shipment detentions.
Effective Aug. 3, however, Customs and Border Protection will apply a rebuttable presumption barring goods produced by these 43 companies from entering the United States because of activities such as sourcing materials from Xinjiang or working with authorities there to recruit, transport, transfer, harbor or receive Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz or members of other marginalized ethnic groups. FLETF also announced technical updates to the official names of two entities already on the list.
“Today we are adding 43 Chinese companies to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List, and DHS will ensure their products do not enter our country,” DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement. “The American worker must not be undercut and cheated by foreign companies that use slave labor. Our job is to defend the homeland, and that includes protecting our citizens from unfair competition that not only disadvantages Americans, but harms human dignity.”
The 43 new entities include companies in high-priority enforcement sectors such as aluminum, apparel, copper, cotton, tomatoes and downstream products. Among them are three garment and textile firms: Fujian Septwolves Industry Co., a Quanzhou-based clothing company known for its men’s wear; Henan Tongzhou Cotton Industry, a Zhengzhou-based enterprise group that deals in cotton acquisition, processing and trade; and Kuitun Yadasi Textile Co., a Xinjiang-based yarn and textile producer.
Laura Murphy, a professor of human rights and a former DHS adviser under the Biden administration, said some of the entries were a long time coming, with reporting on them dating back to at least 2021.
“But I am optimistic that there are more to come,” she wrote on LinkedIn. “There are certainly hundreds more companies—thousands, really—that meet the statutory criteria set by Congress. This will definitely affect supply chains and should be a wake-up call to importers and to the rest of the countries that have just adopted forced labor import bans. Especially now that the U.S. is pushing the world to adopt forced labor import bans, it’s important that the U.S. enforce its own prohibitions, like the UFLPA.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, also welcomed the list’s expansion, saying that it holds companies accountable for “profiting from the Chinese government’s campaign of repression against Uyghur Muslims.”
“No business should benefit from forced labor or from a system of mass surveillance, arbitrary detention, and religious persecution,” Robert McCaw, CAIR’s government affairs director, said in a statement. “The United States and the international community must continue taking concrete steps to ensure that those responsible for these atrocities face meaningful consequences.”
The UFLPA Entity List now contains 187 names.
“The Trump Administration remains steadfast in its commitment to remove forced labor from U.S. supply chains and to holding foreign companies accountable for their exploitation,” DHS Under Secretary for Strategy, Policy, & Plans Rob Law, who serves as the chair of FLETF, said in a statement. “We are uncompromising in the continued prevention of unfair practices that undermine American businesses—expansion of the UFLPA Entity List is a tool by which DHS can ensure both our economic and national security.”
