US Immigration Bureau Raids Texas Bitcoin Mining Farm! Multiple Bitmain employees arrested, Sino-US chip war rages on mining companies
The U.S. Immigration Service, ICE, teamed up with multiple departments to raid the Lonestar Dream mine in Texas and locked up the Bitmain repair center. The chip war and regulatory pressure have brought risks to the U.S. crypto mining supply chain
(Preliminary summary: U.S. Customs detained Bitcoin mining machines for "misidentifying Huawei radio frequency" and called for a ban on TSMC. Now that it has been fully released, it will benefit mining companies)
/>(Background supplement: What is the probability of independent miners successfully producing blocks? Bitcoin mining fully decrypted)
According to multiple sources revealed to Blockspace, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) teamed up with the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations and other units in the early morning of the 29th to parachute into the Lonestar Dream Bitcoin mine in Piot, Texas. The targeted target was the ASIC maintenance center operated by Bitmain.
According to reports, ICE led a team to deploy high-level firepower at the scene. Witnesses described:
"Helicopters, snipers, armed men... They asked leading questions, who did this, who did that..."
In the end, 12 to 13 maintenance center employees (about half of its total staff) were taken away from the scene, focusing on Chinese citizens with expired visas. It is worth noting that other large mining farms in Piot have not been affected, indicating that law enforcement purposes seem to have targeted the maintenance link points associated with Bitmain, indicating that the encryption industry may be involved in a larger geopolitical vortex.
The chip concerns behind the immigration case
On the surface, this is an immigration investigation; but the deeper reason may point to the "chip war" between the United States and China.
The Trump administration asked the customs to conduct a "strategic review" of imported ASIC mining machines at the end of 2024. At that time, a large amount of equipment was stranded at the port. Law enforcement officials have questioned whether the control panel may involve an AI-controlled chip.
At that time, the Ministry of Commerce launched an investigation into whether the Chinese chip company Sophgo (of which Bitmain Zhan is a co-founder) violated export restrictions. This thunderous operation can be regarded as an "extended scan" of high-risk components by the national security system.
Compound regulatory pressure is imminent
The Lonestar Dream mine incident has sounded the alarm for American encryption companies. In the future, in addition to immigration laws, mines must also comply with technology sanctions, land use, energy emissions and local noise requirements.
For miners who rely on China’s supply chain, risks are gradually rising: once relevant components are classified as controlled items, import delays are enough to significantly affect operations. It is expected that in the future, U.S. mining companies may have to consider "geopolitical risks" as a core indicator and accelerate the pace of de-China operations to reduce the possibility of equipment being seized or maintenance blocked.
On the one hand, this may stimulate domestic ASIC research and development in the United States, or prompt companies to turn to policy-friendly countries to find alternative supplies; but on the other hand, operating costs for U.S. mining companies may also rise simultaneously, creating an increasingly complex political terrain for national security and supply chains.
