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The separation of a six-year-old boy from his father after a check-in appointment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement the day before Thanksgiving This outraged New York officials and advocates who rallied for his reelection.
His son Yuanxin, who was enrolled in first grade in Astoria, Queens, was “missing” for more than a week after his father’s arrest, according to immigrant rights advocates fighting for his release.
The father and son were deported to China last week, according to Homeland Security officers.
Yuanxin was one of the youngest immigrants detained by ICE officers during a routine check-in appointment in New York, an apparent tactic used by Donald Trump’s administration. Separating undocumented immigrants from their families and forcing them to leave the country.
His father, Fei Zheng, was arrested and jailed in New York, according to ICE records. After more than a week of efforts to determine Yuanxin’s whereabouts, lawyers and advocates confirmed she was in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which takes control of unaccompanied children separated from their families by ICE.
Fei Zheng was eventually able to speak to his son on the phone twice while they were separated, although authorities did not tell him where he was, according to immigrants’ rights advocate Jenny Spector, who maintained contact with the father while he was in detention.
“This was a family that wanted to contribute to their community, a child who was talented and wanted to get a good education, a father who wanted the best for his child and wanted to work hard,” Spector. told City, “They were denied that opportunity because of our broken and punitive immigration system, a system that is now set up to cause as much harm as possible.”
An initial statement from Homeland Security said Fei Zheng refused to board the plane and was “behaving so disruptively and aggressively that she endangered the child’s well-being.”
“She also attempted to flee and abandon her son,” said Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. Independent In those days. “Mr. Zheng had the right and ability to leave the country as a family and he deliberately chose not to comply.”
The agency later reported that he hit his head against a wall and said he wanted to die during his arrest at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan. the new York TimesCiting internal records.
Zheng and her son entered the United States without legal permission earlier this year and sought asylum in the United States out of fear of torture in China. He was briefly detained inside an ICE facility for families in Texas.
After his release, they settled in New York, with Yuanxin starting first grade as he continued legal proceedings to remain in the country.
He was free for only a few weeks when he was arrested again in November.
According to a family friend, Zheng’s wife had learned of her husband’s deportation from a New York lawyer. City.
“She seemed frustrated – she didn’t know what to do next,” the person said. “But she also seemed to be very clear about that. She is just worried about what life will be like in the future. What her husband will do, how she will earn a living, how she will support him when he returns, how she will deal with his disappointment.”
ICE has arrested at least 140 children under the age of 18 in the New York City area since Trump’s inauguration through mid-October, according to federal data reviewed by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley.
Nationwide, federal immigration officials have arrested more than 3,800 minors, including 20 infants, since Trump took office.
Hundreds of children have been sent to government-run shelters since Trump took office As the administration is arresting immigrant families in increasing numbers to keep pace with the President’s demands for mass deportations.
These actions are reminiscent of the notorious “zero tolerance” era of Trump’s first administration, which separated thousands of migrant children from their parents at the US-Mexico border, a policy that was effectively blocked by a settlement in a federal court case.
But his second administration has launched an “unprecedented” rollback of family separations across the United States, including targeting mixed-status families who have lived in the United States for years, according to legal advocates who spoke to Independent.
Advocates fear that immigration enforcement arrests targeting families in the interior of the country are forcing them to leave their children with other caregivers or none at all, which could mean taking them into foster care systems or shelters with the imminent threat of deportation.
New York City’s elected public attorney Jumaane Williams said the family’s story is “tragically symbolic” of the “brutal trauma of family separation, the lack of due process and inhumane conditions for asylum seekers and others. Enough is enough.”
Diana Moreno, who is running for Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s vacated seat representing Queens in the state Assembly, called the news of the family’s removal “devastating” and reiterated her call to “abolish ICE forever.”
Hundreds of people rallied in Queens this month to support the family, including one of Yuanxin’s teachers.
“His handwriting in both English and Mandarin is amazing. He loves singing and dancing to our ‘Good Morning’ song during our morning meetings. He is great at making friends and he is an important part of our classroom community.” the woman said“Our class feels his absence every day,”
Advocates in New York are also pressuring the Department of Education to “speak out to protect the thousands of immigrant students in this city who are being targeted by ICE.”
“No student should be held in ICE custody separated from his or her family,” according to a statement.