Greater than 30 individuals died whereas being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2025, marking it because the deadliest yr for these held in custody by the company in 20 years. Not less than 5 of the detainees who died have been Asian nationals: Chaofeng Ge, Nhon Ngoc Nguyen, Tien Xuan Phan, Kaiyin Wong and Huabing Xie. To date their deaths have obtained little public consideration, at the same time as ICE will increase raids, expands capability at its services and accelerates deportations throughout the nation.
As I grieve these deaths, I’ve additionally witnessed ways in which mass deportations have induced palpable concern all through the Asian American neighborhood. Just like the Hispanic and Latino communities, in addition to different migrant teams throughout the U.S., Asian households reside below fixed risk of illegal detentions, household separations, neglect, abuse and trauma at for-profit prisons.
In August, ICE guards discovered 32-year-old Chaofeng Ge hanging in a bathe stall on the Moshannon Valley Processing Middle in Philipsburg, Pa. Though investigators dominated Ge’s dying a suicide, the post-mortem report acknowledged that he was discovered together with his fingers and ft tied behind his again. Regardless of these troubling circumstances, the federal authorities has but to launch the complete information relating to Ge’s dying to his household. Chaofeng’s brother filed a Freedom of Data Act lawsuit in November searching for transparency and accountability, and complained that the jail supplied no Mandarin interpretation, leaving his brother remoted and presumably with out entry to medical care or psychological healthcare whereas in custody.
A view of the CoreCivic Otay Mesa Detention Middle in San Diego. The personal establishment has been suffering from allegations of medical negligence, abusive and retaliatory habits in opposition to immigrants, sexual harassment, poor meals and water high quality, and different harmful circumstances.
(Carlos Moreno / Anadolu through Getty Photos)
Seven detainees on the California Metropolis Immigration Processing Middle have made comparable claims, accusing ICE of inhumane circumstances inside its community of for-profit detention facilities, together with delayed medical care, insufficient meals and water, and restricted entry to interpreters. Issues are prone to solely worsen until the company profiteering that drives mass detention ends now.
Ge’s dying factors not solely to the damaging circumstances inside ICE services, but in addition to the broader local weather of terror that mass deportation insurance policies have instilled in massive segments of our neighborhood. At the moment, 1 in 7 Asian immigrants residing within the U.S. are undocumented and below imminent risk of elimination, and undocumented Asian college students characterize a big share of the inhabitants, accounting for about 16.5% of these eligible for DACA advantages.
Given the widespread and devastating impression of ICE arrests, greater than 70% of Asian People now disapprove of President Trump’s immigration insurance policies, arguing that his mass deportation practices have gone too far.
Trump’s insurance policies are largely a continuation of immigration legal guidelines which have traditionally excluded Asian People. Within the nineteenth century, our nation’s first mass deportation legal guidelines focused the surveillance, registration and detention of Chinese language individuals residing within the American West. My household’s personal immigration information from a century in the past communicate of my great-grand-uncle’s elimination and of my grandparents’ detainment on the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco.
Although my grandfather was a native-born American citizen, his bride was imprisoned by armed guards for weeks as a result of the federal government had racially profiled the 2 as unlawful immigrants. White witnesses have been required to testify on my grandfather’s birthright citizenship, and my grandmother was required to accurately reply a 56-question interrogation or else be deported. The poems of Chinese language prisoners inscribed on the partitions of the Angel Island immigration middle communicate to the concern and injustice that they and 1000’s extra endured.
Roy Takeno, standing, addressing group of individuals at City Corridor Assembly, Manzanar Relocation Middle, California, 1943.
(Ansel Adams / Common Photos Group through Getty Photos)
The usage of deportations as a type of worldwide segregation persists immediately as politicians rehearse outdated stereotypes to scapegoat and expel migrants. As soon as once more charged as “prison” and “invading armies,” a variety of Asian teams face racialized deportation practices that deny them their rights and fracture households.
Think about Yunseo Chung, a 21-year-old Korean American pupil and lawful everlasting U.S. resident. After she exercised her proper to free speech whereas taking part in student-led demonstrations at Columbia College, ICE moved to revoke Chung’s standing and sought to deport her a number of instances. Solely when Chung sued the U.S. authorities to forestall her deportation did she acquire a restraining order, blocking her elimination.
One other harmless caught on this system is 6-year-old Yuanxin Zheng, a Chinese language immigrant who arrived in New York Metropolis together with his father in April. Whilst they have been following correct procedures to achieve asylum, the household was forcibly separated by ICE on Nov. 26. Among the many greater than 2,600 youngsters arrested this yr by ICE, Yuanxin is among the youngest. And though Yuanxin’s panic-stricken father was allowed a short telephone name together with his son, he was left at midnight about his youngster’s whereabouts. ICE didn’t reunite the 2 till they have been deported collectively, greater than three weeks later.
Immigration activists block a storage utilized by ICE vans throughout a protest in opposition to a purported ICE raid on Canal Avenue on Nov. 29 in New York Metropolis.
(Stephanie Keith / Getty Photos)
Southeast Asian refugees additionally face a type of double jeopardy below the present administration’s insurance policies. Greater than 15,000 Southeast Asians, a lot of whom served jail sentences for offenses dedicated of their youth, confront a second punishment: deportation orders.
For instance, whereas serving 26 years in jail for homicide, Phoeun You graduated from self-help applications, rebuilt his life and proved his dedication to alter as he earned parole. But You by no means acquired to embrace his dad and mom upon his launch. As a substitute, he was instantly deported to Cambodia, a nation he by no means knew, and was completely separated from his household. “I went from a life sentence to an everlasting life sentence,” You informed me once we spoke in February.
Final yr, a survey by the Asian American Basis reported that 63% of Asians now really feel unsafe due to their race. ICE’s use of racial profiling and our nation’s xenophobic local weather have undoubtedly contributed to those anxieties.
The 5 deaths of Asian nationals in ICE custody in 2025 aren’t simply remoted tragedies. They reveal a system that has expanded sooner than oversight can observe. Language obstacles, delayed medical care and an absence of transparency inside detention facilities have already had deadly penalties. This damaged system doesn’t make America safer however as a substitute strikes concern all through whole communities. ICE’s racial profiling and punitive enforcement practices don’t result in safety however as a substitute inflict lasting traumas on households and on generations like mine.
Ge’s passing calls for justice — not just for his household, however for the tip of for-profit prisons, of household separation and of the racist and violent enforcement of deportations. Every is a merciless and weird punishment; collectively they represent a morally bankrupt immigration system.
Russell Jeung is a professor of Asian American research at San Francisco State College and co-founder of Cease AAPI Hate.
