Saturday, FBI Director Kash Patel met with both of Arkansas’ U.S. Senators, Tom Cotton and John Boozman, as well as state Attorney General Tim Griffin, for a roundtable discussion with law enforcement officials in Little Rock.
Officials held a press conference in the Old Supreme Court chamber of the State Capitol building following the roundtable. There, Cotton said a consistent point raised during the discussion was the threat of Chinese activity in Arkansas, which he called “pressing and urgent.”
“From threatening our critical infrastructure and conducting economic espionage, buying up farmland, flooding our communities with deadly fentanyl, Communist China has taken the fight on the frontlines to us here in Arkansas,” said Cotton.
Cotton said the partnership between Arkansas and the FBI, through its Little Rock field office, is “leading the charge” in countering the threat. He cited 2025’s Operation Enforce and Remove as a success in countering this threat.
“This operation seized thousands of pills of fentanyl, confiscated dozens of grams of fentanyl powder, and saved untold lives.”
Operation Enforce and Remove was conducted in early 2025, following executive orders issued by President Trump on January 21. While 472 arrests were made through February 2025 through that effort, 219 were listed as residing in the United States illegally.
The Department of Justice says that number included arrests of people from 23 countries.
In late February 2025, a representative told the Arkansas Times that those arrested included undocumented immigrants from India, Laos, Vietnam, Egypt, Peru, Nigeria, Honduras, Cuba, Mexico, and the Marshall Islands.
Additional tracking from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) indicates that 21 individuals in Arkansas were placed in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody during that period.
The data does not include any specific mention of Chinese nationals taken into custody, but does note that nationwide, 12% of detainees were from “other countries,” with each making up 1% or fewer of total detainees.
Cotton also said Arkansas Act 636 of 2023 was instrumental in removing Chinese influence from the state.
Act 636 bars “prohibited foreign-party-controlled business” from holding public or private land in the state. Cotton said he hopes to replicate the state’s act nationwide with a proposal he has sponsored, the “Not One More Inch or Acre Act” currently before Congress.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said a major focus of his administration is on combating human trafficking and fentanyl production, which he again said was stemming from China.
“What we have found as we raid these illicit sexual massage parlors, what we find is that they’re all, every single one of them, tied to mainland China,” said Griffin, “Chinese currency, Chinese wire transfers, Chinese nationals working in them. In rural Arkansas, stacks of Chinese currency.”
Griffin launched Operation Obscured Vision in January of 2025 which, as of August, the attorney general said had executed search warrants at 13 locations across Arkansas and resulted in seven arrests.
Griffin said the operation identified 23 trafficking victims, all of whom were Chinese nationals.
FBI Director Kash Patel was effusive in praise for Sens. Cotton and Boozman and said Arkansas was a critical intersection for national security. He listed several points nationwide as highlights of the administration.
“This administration, in its first year, has seen a 20% reduction in the murder rate from coast to coast. That is a record for the modern era since 1900. This administration has seized — this FBI has seized enough fentanyl to kill 140-million Americans. That’s a 31% increase. This FBI has arrested six of the top ten most wanted fugitives in the world, to include individuals wanted in states across this country for heinous crimes.”
Cotton fielded a handful of questions from reporters.
Asked what intelligence is driving the growing response to Chinese espionage, Cotton and Patel said that information sharing played a significant role. Cotton said that intelligence shows that fentanyl is almost universally stemming from China, even when moved across other countries. A January 2020 report from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency indicates that it traced the majority of fully compounded illicit fentanyl back to mainland China.
In May of 2019, the report says China officially controlled all forms of fentanyl, listing them as a class of drugs.
Following that year and continuing into the present day, the illicit fentanyl market can be traced back to Chinese production of precursor chemicals, essentially the building blocks of fentanyl, which is then shipped internationally, often entering the United States through Mexico.
While the manufacture and sale of these drugs are outside China’s official law, reporting from the Brookings Institution in 2024 indicates that enforcement is often tied to geopolitical strategy, meaning shipments destined for “China-unfriendly” countries such as the United States are less scrutinized than those the Chinese government considers partners.
Cotton said there was no specific impetus to the meeting, though he noted that he had extended the invitation to Patel shortly after his confirmation by Congress.
Protestors outside of the Capitol waved signs, played music, and chanted throughout the duration of the press conference. Following its conclusion, a handful of people who had made their way into the Capitol building could be heard booing and jeering as Patel and others made their way out of the Old Supreme Court chamber.
The protestors carried signs opposing ICE activity in Arkansas and nationwide and called on officials to uphold their sworn oaths to the Constitution.
