SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is hitting back at the Justice Department over a lawsuit alleging that the company engaged in employment discrimination against asylum recipients and refugees.

The Dept. of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday announced a lawsuit against SpaceX alleging that the company “routinely discouraged asylees and refugees from applying and refused to hire or consider them, because of their citizenship status, in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).” According to the suit, SpaceX wrongly claimed that federal laws and regulations restricted the company to only hiring U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, also known as green card holders.

Musk took to X, the social media platform he acquired that was formerly known as Twitter, and posted in response to a picture of a job posting at the federal Bureau of Prisons showing that U.S. citizenship is required as a condition of employment that the “DOJ needs to sue themselves!”

DOJ FILES LAWSUIT ACCUSING SPACEX OF HIRING DISCRIMINATION AGAINST REFUGEES, ASYLUM RECIPIENTS

“SpaceX was told repeatedly that hiring anyone who was not a permanent resident of the United States would violate international arms trafficking law, which would be a criminal offense,” Musk said in another post on the platform. “We couldn’t even hire Canadian citizens, despite Canada being part of NORAD! This is yet another case of weaponization of the DOJ for political purposes.”

DOJ’s lawsuit noted that asylees and refugees are legally permitted by the federal government to live and work in the U.S. without expiration, and added that there is no restriction on asylees or refugees working for companies that have to comply with export control requirements.

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Within the filing, DOJ noted Musk’s past public posts on the subject including one from 2020 on the platform then known as Twitter in which he wrote, “US law requires at least a green card to be hired at SpaceX, as rockets are considered advanced weapons technology.” It included another post citing the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) as a reason why the company was confined to hiring U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.

The suit also lists numerous other instances in which SpaceX employees and hiring managers posted public announcements stating that the company could only hire U.S. citizens and green card holders. 

Data provided by SpaceX to the DOJ indicated that from September 2018 to May 2022, the company only hired one individual who identified themselves as an asylee during the application process out of more than 10,000 hires and did not hire any individuals who identified as refugees in their applications during that period.

WHAT IS SPACEX?

“Our investigation found that SpaceX failed to fairly consider or hire asylees and refugees because of their citizenship status and imposed what amounted to a ban on their hire regardless of their qualification, in violation of federal law,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. “Our investigation found that SpaceX recruiters and high-level officials took actions that actively discouraged asylees and refugees from seeking work opportunities at the company.”

“Asylees and refugees have overcome many obstacles in their lives, and unlawful employment discrimination based on their citizenship status should not be one of them,” Clarke added. “Through this lawsuit we will hold SpaceX accountable for its illegal employment practices and seek relief that allows asylees and refugees to fairly compete for job opportunities and contribute their talents to SpaceX’s workforce.”

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The Justice Department is seeking “fair consideration and back pay for asylees and refugees who were deterred or denied employment at SpaceX due to the alleged discrimination.” It is also pursuing civil penalties that may be determined by the court and policy changes to ensure SpaceX complies with the Immigration and Nationality Act’s non-discrimination requirement in the future.

The DOJ Civil Rights Division’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section is requesting that asylees or refugees contact the division if they either applied to a job at SpaceX and were rejected; were discouraged from applying to SpaceX because they weren’t a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident; or were told by a recruiter or other SpaceX employee that the company could only hire U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

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Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo arrived in Beijing late Sunday to kick off a four-day trip that the Biden administration hopes will stabilize trade ties with China as tensions rise amid a geopolitical competition between the world’s two largest economies.

Raimondo spoke with President Biden on Thursday in advance of the trip, and she told reporters that the president’s message centered around the idea that the U.S. and China need to keep lines of communication open to prevent disputes from escalating.

“We want to have a stable commercial relationship – and core to that is regular communication,” Raimondo said. “We need to communicate to avoid conflict.”

The U.S. and its allies have been working to restrict China’s access to advanced semiconductors due to concerns the high-end chips could aid the Chinese military’s modernization and enhance Chinese companies’ competitiveness while also furthering the government’s internal repression and human rights violations.

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Republican lawmakers have criticized reports that Raimondo will establish a working group with China to serve as a forum for discussions about U.S. export controls on semiconductors. Raimondo didn’t confirm plans for a working group on semiconductor issues but said she would tell Chinese officials that “when it comes to national security, we don’t negotiate. We don’t give concessions. We don’t compromise.”

Her visit to China comes a little more than one year after the bipartisan CHIPS Act was signed into law, which provided $52 billion in subsidies and incentives to build semiconductor manufacturing facilities in the U.S. to boost domestic production and reduce reliance on Chinese supply chains.

“Just because we’re investing in America does not mean at all that we want to decouple from China’s economy,” Raimondo said.

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Last spring, China slapped restrictions on Micron, a leading producer of chips used in computer memory and data storage hardware, after the U.S. and Japan announced curbs on Chinese firms’ access to tech used in chip manufacturing. China’s lead cybersecurity regulator cited “serious network risks to China’s critical infrastructure supply chain, affecting China’s national security” as the reason for the restrictions.

Raimondo’s trip comes amid reports that Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei has received roughly $30 billion in government funding and is building semiconductor manufacturing facilities under different business names that could allow it to dodge U.S. sanctions.

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The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security told FOX Business in a statement last week, “Given the severe restrictions on Huawei, Fujian Jinhua, PXW and others, it is no surprise that they have sought substantial state support to attempt to develop indigenous technologies. BIS is continually reviewing and updating its export controls based on the evolving threat environment and, as evidenced by the Oct. 7 2022 rules, will not hesitate to take appropriate action to protect U.S. national security.”

Another topic on which Raimondo hopes to make progress during her trip to China is restoring tourism to pre-pandemic levels. Although the U.S. and China agreed this month to double the number of flights permitted between the two countries, it remains a fraction of what it was prior to the COVID pandemic. Raimondo estimated that if China returned to its 2019 level of tourism to the U.S., it would add $30 billion to the economy along with 50,000 jobs.

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Chinese airlines have also been blocked from taking deliveries of Boeing 737 MAX jets for the last four years in deals worth “tens of billions of dollars,” Raimondo noted in 2021. Boeing says it’s ready to deliver airplanes to Chinese airlines “when the time comes,” although it’s unclear whether those deliveries will resume after Raimondo’s trip.

Raimondo – who is the fourth high-level official from the Biden administration to visit China in recent months and is the first commerce secretary to go to China in seven years – is set to hold bilateral meetings with Chinese officials on Monday and Tuesday in Beijing before she goes to Shanghai. U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns will join the secretary on the trip.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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