What's Happening In Ivanka Trump's Factories In China? Activists Who Were Investigating Go Missing

Ivanka Trump was urged Wednesday to stop working with her Chinese supplier a day after reports said two activists disappeared and another was arrested for investigating labor conditions at the company making shoes for her label.

The three activists were probing into labor conditions at Huajian shoe factories for China Labor Watch, a New York-based nonprofit organization that aims to defend workers’ rights, reports said. The Huajian factory makes as many as 20,000 pairs of shoes a year for the Ivanka Trump brand. It also makes millions more for others, including Coach and Nine West.

"Ivanka's brand should immediately cease its work with this supplier, and the Trump administration should reverse its current course and confront China on its human rights abuses," Adrienne Watson, spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said in a Wednesday email, ABC News reported. Watson added Ivanka must decide "whether she can ignore the Chinese government's apparent attempt to silence an investigation into those worker abuses."

China Labor Watch director Li Qiang said his investigators worked undercover in the factory for more than a month and shot some video footage showing workers being forced to work overtime without pay. Qiang also said he found evidence of workers being threatened with dismissal if they took sick leave and that they were forced to sign falsified time sheets, NPR reported.

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William Nee, China researcher at Amnesty International in Hong Kong said the detentions reflected another attack on civil society in the country under Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Washington Post reported. "The Chinese state seems to be aggressively going after any activists who have any ties to overseas organizations under the all-encompassing umbrella of ‘national security," he said.

The White House declined to comment on the matter, with spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, referring questions to Ivanka Trump’s company, which also refused to comment. Huajian meanwhile, the company running the factory in China, its spokesman Wei Xuegang said he was not aware of any arrests, according to the Post.

It was Ivanka's silence on the matter however, that received criticism on social media.

Ivanka is also being criticized for not following her father's principle of "America First" as the goods for her brand are mostly made overseas, according to a New York Times review of shipments compiled separately by two trade databases, Panjiva and ImportGenius.

President Donald Trump has always urged U.S. companies to manufacture their products in the country. Ivanka's brand of clothing, which includes handbags, knitted dresses and pullovers, woven dresses and blouses, among other items, according to U.S. Customs data provided by the research firm Panjiva to NBC News, are manufactured overseas.

Since Donald Trump was elected president on Nov. 8, 2016, it is believed 56 of Ivanka's shipments have come from Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore.