The FBI noted in the Tuesday court filing that there have been instances of college students from China taking photos of vital defense sites in the United States.
There was nothing in the file revealing the whereabouts of the five men.
“The defendants are not in custody. Should they come into contact with U.S. authorities, they will be arrested and face these charges,” Gina Balaya, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Detroit, said Wednesday.
In summer 2023, the five were confronted after midnight near a lake by a sergeant major with the Utah National Guard. One said, “We are media,” before they collected their belongings and agreed to leave the area, the FBI said.
The FBI learned that the men had booked a room at a nearby motel a week before they were spotted outside Camp Grayling, 200 miles (320 kilometers) north of Detroit.
Four months later, one of the men was interviewed by border officers at the Detroit airport before traveling to South Korea and China. He told investigators that he and others had taken a trip to northern Michigan “to see shooting stars,” the FBI said.
A check of his external hard drive revealed two images of military vehicles taken on the same night of the encounter with the National Guard officer, the FBI said.
The other four men were interviewed last March after arriving in Chicago on a flight from Iceland. They acknowledged being in northern Michigan in August 2023, but they said it was to see a meteor shower, the FBI said.
They mentioned the National Guard officer but referred to him only as “the soldier,” a camper or “nice guy,” according to the criminal complaint.
The men last December communicated on WeChat about clearing photos from their cameras and phones, investigators said.
The FBI said all five men graduated last spring from the University of Michigan. They were part of a joint program between the university and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, China.
In 2020, two Chinese nationals who were pursuing master's degrees at the University of Michigan were sentenced to prison for illegally photographing sites at a naval air station in Key West, Florida.
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