U.S. prosecutors charged two men with professional ties to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with participating in what federal officials have described as a “transnational repression scheme” that involved spying on and harassing political dissidents in the United States on behalf of the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC).

Craig Miller, a DHS deportation officer who has worked out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, for the last 15 years, and Derrick Taylor, a former DHS law enforcement agent and private investigator in Irvine, California, were indicted on Thursday by a federal grand jury, alongside three other men.