Washington D.C. – ACLJ, Sept. 16, 2026
Pastor John Cao, a U.S. Lawful Permanent Resident from North Carolina, completed every day of a seven-year sentence in a Chinese prison for building schools and delivering humanitarian aid to impoverished children along the China-Burma border. But when he was finally released on March 5, 2024, he was still not free to return home. He has now waited more than two and a half years for Beijing to allow him to come home to his family in the United States – and this year, doctors gave him a diagnosis that turns that wait into something closer to a death sentence: Stage 4 cancer.
Under Article 14 of China’s Passport Law, authorities may withhold a released prisoner’s passport for up to three years (March 5, 2027) – but nothing requires a wait that long. The statute gives officials discretion to issue a passport after just six months, but they haven’t, despite multiple requests by Pastor Cao.
In the years Cao has spent trapped in China, his sons have grown into adulthood; his youngest son married without his father present. He has a grandchild he has never met. His wife has carried the burden of advocacy and hope that this ordeal has demanded, largely alone. Now, with a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis, what began as bureaucratic delay has become a matter of whether he lives long enough to see any of them again.
