On May 7, 2026, Indiana University’s police department temporarily locked Biology professor Roger W. Innes and three other faculty members out of their labs, apparently at the direction of US Department of Agriculture officials. US authorities provided no public justification for closing the labs, creating the appearance that the action may have been taken in retaliation for Innes’s public criticism of the US’s investigations and deportations of two Chinese postdoctoral researchers.
In June 2025, Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) director Kash Patel announced that Yunqing Jian, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan, had been arrested for allegedly smuggling a strain of fungus into the US. Patel stated that the fungus posed an economic and agricultural national security threat. Jian’s lawyer consulted with Innes, an expert on plant-microbe interactions, and then asked Innes for a written expert statement rebutting the claim that the fungal strains posed a risk to US agriculture. In his written statement, Innes stated that the materials that Jian had brought into the country “posed no risk to U.S. farmers, or anyone else.”
In November 2025,, one week after Innes’s statement was read in court, the FBI launched an investigation into Youhuang Xiang, a postdoctoral researcher in Innes’s lab. The FBI next revoked Xiang’s visa for allegedly bringing biological samples into the US without declaring them, and arrested Xiang on November 23. In detention, Xiang pleaded guilty. On April 10, 2026, he was fined, sentenced to time served, and issued an order of removal from the US, forcing him to return to China later that month.
As part of the investigation into Xiang, in December 2025, FBI agents searched Innes’s lab and office. On February 3, 2026, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) sent Innes a letter stating that his lab was compliant with government regulations. But in May 2026, three weeks after Xiang’s sentencing, Innes received a new letter from the USDA notifying him, apparently without explanation, that the prior letter stating that his lab was compliant had been sent “in error.”
On May 7, 2026, IU locked Innes out of his lab, stating in an email to him, “We have been notified by the US Department of Agriculture that they will be engaging in activity in a laboratory associated with the biology department.” In total six rooms in the laboratory were locked. During the closure, federal inspectors searched the lab, accompanied by Innes. The lockdown also affected three other faculty members and, according to Biology Department Chair Armin P. Moczek, affected the work of approximately 40-50 others with “no affiliation to the Innes lab, but” with “experiments, organisms, and external funding obligations to tend to.”
After nearly two weeks, Innes’s lab was reopened. The closure caused Innes and his postdoctoral researchers to start some of their research over. US officials provided no formal reason for closing or reopening Innes’s lab.
Scholars at Risk is concerned about a government-ordered, university-abetted interference in research activities, without explanation, justification, or apparent opposition from the institution. SAR is further concerned about the possibility that the interference was in retaliation for a scholar’s public, professional expression that contradicted a government official. State and university officials have an obligation to refrain from retaliatory actions intended to punish, restrict, or chill the exercise of academic freedom. State or university actions which sanction scholars for their professional expression, or that fail to oppose such sanctions, undermine academic freedom, and democratic society generally.
Sources:
https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-professor-defended-a-postdoc-who-was-deported-now-his-lab-has-been-suddenly-locked-down
https://www.science.org/content/article/after-usda-request-indiana-plant-biologist-locked-out-lab-school
https://www.science.org/content/article/chinese-postdocs-u-s-hit-wave-prosecutions-and-deportations
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/research/2026/05/22/iu-biologists-lab-reopened-research-set-back
https://www.ipm.org/news/2026-04-17/hysteria-or-national-security-iu-researcher-from-china-to-be-deported
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01590-w
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mied.388615/gov.uscourts.mied.388615.29.5_2.pdf