A husband and wife have been arrested in a child abuse investigation that centered on a home in Arcadia where authorities said nearly two dozen children, many born via surrogates, had been living in “horrific” conditions, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said Tuesday. 

Guojon Xuan, 65, and his wife, Sylvia Zhang, 38, were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit child abuse. The FBI said it is executing a federal search warrant Tuesday at the residence. 

The couple is being held in lieu of $20 million bail each, pending a bail review hearing Monday.

Police focused in on the property after receiving a child abuse allegation in May 2025. During the investigation, detectives discovered that nearly two dozen children, from 2 months to 13 years old, had been living inside the home.

Some of the 21 children were born through different surrogates, police said. 

At a Tuesday news conference, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman and Sheriff Robert Luna detailed what they called “horrific abuse” in a “house of horrors.” Hochman said the couple set up a surrogacy agency that they operated from their home and used that agency to hire surrogates throughout the U.S.

“This case is unprecedented. It is horrific,” Hochman said during a news conference. “The physical abuse, beating and punishment that these very young children received is despicable.”

Hochman said the couple set up three rooms they called learning centers, where the children spent several hours a day sitting at desks under the supervision of nannies. Through an extensive surveillance system including motion-activated cameras, the couple watched as the nannies subjected the children to physical abuse including daily beatings, he said.

Authorities said the video showed a nanny violently shaking and striking the hospitalized infant on May 5, resulting in a loss of consciousness.

According to Hochman and Luna, the parents typically monitored the abuse from 32 motion-activated cameras and microphones. Another area had no cameras, but children’s screams could be heard after children were brought into the room, Hochman said. 

The couple began living at the residence in April 2021, Luna said. 

“The house could only be described as a house of horrors for these incredible young children,” Hochman said.

The investigation by Arcadia police began in the spring of 2025 after Zhang brought the couple’s 2-month-old son to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, where doctors found the infant had a brain bleed. Chunmei Li, a nanny charged with assaulting the child by striking the side of his head, fled to China before police could take her into custody.

Police responded to at least six 911 calls at the San Gabriel Valley home since January 2022, according to documents obtained through a records request. Police may have responded to more 911 calls, but several calls were redacted from the documents.

When asked about the couple’s motivation, Hochman said that was part of the ongoing investigation, as was the parentage of each child.

It is not clear how many children at the home were born to surrogate mothers, but one of the mothers was found in Texas by a bioethics watchdog group. The woman said she was misled into thinking her child was the only child who would be taken in at the Arcadia residence.

Surrogacy is an arrangement in which a woman agrees to carry and deliver a child for another person or couple, often after an embryo transfer.

There is no comprehensive federal law regulating surrogacy, leaving most rules to the states. California is considered a “surrogacy-friendly state” because it has clear laws governing the process. Both sides are required to have lawyers, and there must be a written, notarized contract before an embryo transfer takes place.

Investigators have said they were looking into whether the couple had misled surrogates around the country and that at least eight women came forward to say they were aggressively pursued by the couple to serve as surrogates.