A boy, a father - and a separation that says everything about this regime

Yuanxin Zheng is six years old, wears glasses, a white shirt - and was torn out of the world he had just begun to build in a single day. When his father brought him to the routine check-in at the ICE building at Federal Plaza, there were no questions waiting, no consultation, no indication of what was about to happen. Instead, handcuffs were waiting. For the father, jail in Orange County, for the son a transfer into the custody of the US Office of Refugee Resettlement for unaccompanied minors. A forced separation, carried out by a government that no longer merely enforces deportations but uses them to break people. Yuanxin had just been enrolled in an elementary school in Queens. A spot the family had looked forward to, after fleeing to the United States through Mexico in the spring because the father feared he would be tortured in China. But his fear was deemed to be “not credible.”

A judge confirmed this classification, and although Fei Zheng has no criminal record, the family was shuttled back and forth between detention and brief periods of freedom. When ICE tried to put him on a plane to China in September, he refused out of fear. In October again. On the third attempt, at the end of November, agents moved in - and separated him from his son in order to “compel compliance,” as attorneys and experts call it.

Local outcry followed quickly. The mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, called it “pure cruelty.” Senator Schumer and Representative Nydia Velázquez are demanding answers. But ICE remained silent - and left the father in the dark for days about where his child even was. Only from documents does it become clear that Yuanxin was placed in federal custody without any family member, and, as data show, may remain there for months. Children now spend on average almost half a year in these facilities. Under this government, even that has become a number that keeps rising.

Zheng’s attorney describes his client as desperate, exhausted, afraid of what awaits him in China. Internal reports state that during his arrest he hit the wall and said he no longer wanted to live. This is not an isolated case but the result of a practice that would have been unimaginable even under earlier Republicans and Democrats. A former government official says openly that the goal is to “break” the father by taking his child away. Another warns that a six-year-old child is being turned into an instrument here - a tool to force the capitulation of an adult. Data and reporting show that since Trump’s return to office, hundreds of children have been detained in the New York region - around 2,600 nationwide. Many are younger than ten. Yuanxin is among the youngest of them. We are currently handling over 120 ICE cases involving children, the youngest being 2 years old. We are also working on further cases from New York, such as the case of a six-year-old student from Queens. Together with her mother and her 19-year-old brother, they were detained during an ICE appointment in the building at Federal Plaza. Mother and daughter were taken to a newly reopened family detention center in Texas within a day, while the brother was held separately and later transferred to Newark. The family is from Ecuador and lived in Jackson Heights, but two other children did not have to appear at the ICE appointment and therefore remained unaffected and are currently living in a care facility.

None of what these families have done bears any relation to the treatment they are experiencing. They are not criminals. They have endangered no one. They sought protection in a country that long prided itself on not tearing families apart. This government has turned it into a method. Officially, it is said that parents have “the opportunity at any time” to depart with their children. In practice that means: Either you leave voluntarily - or you lose your child until you are ready to leave the country. In the case of Fei Zheng and his son, ICE now plans to reunite them later in the month - but only to deport them.

A neighbor who spoke with the father described Yuanxin as bright and curious. A boy who looked forward to English lessons. A child who should never have had to experience a state tearing his family apart to demonstrate toughness. What is happening here is not complicated. It is a question of humanity - and this government’s answer grows more brutal by the day.

To be continued .....