A six-year-old boy’s separation from his father after a check-in appointment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement one day before Thanksgiving drew outrage from New York officials and advocates who rallied for their reunion.
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 immigrants’ rights advocates who fought for their release.
The father and son were deported to China last week, according to Homeland Security officials.
Yuanxin was among the youngest immigrants taken from ICE officials during a routine check-in appointment in New York, drawing scrutiny into an apparent tactic used by Donald Trump’s administration to pressure undocumented migrants into leaving the country by separating them from their families.
His father Fei Zheng was arrested and jailed in upstate New York, according to ICE records. After more than a week of attempts to determine Yuanxin’s whereabouts, lawyers and advocates confirmed he 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 with his son twice over the phone while they were separated, though officials did not tell him where he was, according to Jennie Spector, an immigrants’ rights advocate who maintained contact with the father while he was in custody.
“This was a family who wanted to contribute to their community, a child who was bright and wanted to get a good education, a father who wanted the best for his child and wanted to work hard,” Spector told The 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 a plane and “was acting so disruptive and aggressive that he endangered the child’s wellbeing.”
“He even attempted to escape and abandon his son,” Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin told The Independent at the time. “Mr. Zheng had the right and the ability to depart the country as a family and willfully choose to not 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, according to The New York Times, citing internal records.
Zheng and his son entered the United States without legal permission earlier this year and sought asylum in the United States over fears of torture in China. They were briefly detained inside an ICE facility for families in Texas.
After their release, they began to settle in New York, with Yuanxin starting first grade, as they continued legal proceedings to remain in the country.
They had only been free for a few weeks before they were arrested again in November.
Zheng’s wife had learned about her husband’s deportation from a lawyer in New York, according to a family friend who spoke to The City.
“She sounded hopeless — unsure of what to do next,” the person said. “But she also sounded very clear-eyed about this. She’s just worried about what life would look like in the future. What her husband would do, how to make a living, how to support her husband when he returns, how to deal with his despair.”
ICE has arrested at least 140 children younger than 18 years old 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 authorities 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 arrests a growing number of immigrant families to keep pace with the president’s demands for mass removals.
The actions recall the infamous “zero tolerance” era of Trump’s first administration that separated thousands of migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, a policy that was effectively blocked by a settlement in a federal court case.
But his second administration has launched an “unprecedented” return of family separation 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 The Independent.
Advocates fear immigration enforcement arrests targeting families in the country’s interior are forcing them to leave their children behind with other caregivers or none at all, which could mean moving them into foster care systems or shelters, with imminent threat of removal from the country.
New York City’s elected public advocate Jumaane Williams said the family’s story is “tragically emblematic” of “the cruel trauma of family separation, a lack of due process for asylum seekers and others, and inhumane conditions. Enough.”
Diana Moreno, who is running for Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s vacant seat representing Queens in the state assembly, called the news of the family’s removal “devastating” and renewed her demands to “abolish ICE once and for all.”
Hundreds of people rallied in Queens this month to support the family, including one of Yuanxin’s teachers.
“He has amazing handwriting both in English and Mandarin. He loves to sing and dance 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 single day.”
Advocates in New York also are pressing the Department of Education to “speak up to defend the tens of thousands of immigrant students in this city who are being targeted by ICE.”
“No student should be held in ICE custody separately from their family,” according to a statement.
