For Ottawa Hills resident Wei Zheng, every day could be his last day in the United States.
“I never drink, I never do drugs, I never party, I never take advantage of other people,” Mr. Zheng, 50, said. “I always charge less and do more on my promise.”
For the past 33 years, Mr. Zheng has called the United States his home, but as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office next week, the husband and father of three worries daily that he won’t be able to return to his house.
Mr. Zheng was detained Aug. 31, 2011, by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. After three months, he was paroled under order of supervision. Since then, he has followed strict ICE instructions that have kept him in the United States.
To return to China, Mr. Zheng needs proof he is a Chinese citizen. In 2017, under Trump’s previous administration, Mr. Zheng was instructed by ICE to obtain his Chinese passport. He requested one and still reported to ICE regularly, sometimes even twice in the same week.
During that time, he applied for a I-360 petition under the Violence Against Women Act, signed into law in 1994 by President Bill Clinton, which supports survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking. Immigrants can apply for the petition to receive additional considerations in their cases.
He was approved in 2018, reducing his ICE check-ins to once a year. During the Biden Administration’s four years, Mr. Zheng has not been contacted by ICE to check in, nor has it asked for his Chinese passport, but he worries now that will change under the incoming Trump administration.
“That’s why, when Trump is back in office, what scares me is, if he cannot deport me back to China, then what is he going to do?” Mr. Zheng asked. “Is he going to deport me to a third-world country?”
Dan Stein, the president for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said he believes a Trump administration priority will be to negotiate with countries like China that won’t take their citizens back without proper identification. FAIR is a nonpartisan nonprofit that works to reduce overall immigration and has been critical of Biden Administration immigration policy.
“People who are here for a long time won’t be the first to be removed, but they are still subject to removal if they are here illegally,” Mr. Stein said.
Emily Brown, an assistant clinical professor of law and the director of the Immigration Clinic at Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law, said immigrants can expect a number of policy changes once Trump is sworn in.
“I would imagine that we will see an increase in detention,” Ms. Brown said. “Particularly, they will probably start detaining more people in the interior, so working with state and local law enforcement to arrest people, either who have been or are somehow caught up in state and local custody.”
Both Ms. Brown and Mr. Stein expect that “almost all” of President Biden’s policies will be reversed.
Mr. Zheng is preparing to reopen his deportation case but is uncertain where that will leave him.
A long history with legal status
In 1991, when he was 17 years old, Mr. Zheng landed at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport with his mother and brother and a B-2 visa in hand. He settled in New Jersey to work in his family’s restaurant.
He got a work permit the following year, and a few years later left New Jersey for Ohio.
When he filed for asylum just one year later, he lied to convince the judge to let him stay. New York Judge George Chew denied his application for asylum in 1996, but Mr. Zheng appealed the decision.
“I lied when I was in my teenage years, my early 20s, but I know I made a mistake,” Mr. Zheng said.
At the same time, Mr. Zheng filed to suspend his deportation. Prior to President Clinton, immigrants who lived in the United States for seven years could apply to suspend their deportation, but the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 increased that to 10 years.
Mr. Zheng told Judge Chew his application for asylum was inaccurate, and the judge reopened the case in 2007. However, the judge moved the case to the Cleveland Immigration Court since Mr. Zheng had become an Ohio resident. There, Ohio Judge William Evans, Jr., denied his resident alien “green card” application and issued a deportation order.
In August, 2011, ICE agents appeared at Mr. Zheng’s door and were greeted by his son.
“I just remember I thought there were police at the door,” said Ting Zheng, who was 5 years old at the time. “I didn’t know they were here for my dad.”
The elder Mr. Zheng spent three months in a Cleveland-area jail before being paroled under the supervision order.
Since then, he applied for and obtained a I-360 VAWA petition and graduated Owens Community College with an HVAC certification. He now operates Sunair Electric LLC in Toledo.
The future of immigration policy
The Biden Administration in June admitted more than 100,000 refugees into the United States, the most in three decades. In his prior term’s final year, Trump let in the fewest number of refugees since the Refugee Act of 1980.
Ms. Brown said refugee admissions historically have not been a partisan issue.
“The numbers haven’t varied in the past greatly by political party,” she said. “So [Trump’s administration] marked a huge change.”
Mr. Stein disagreed, saying that refugee admissions have always been partisan.
“It’s a national tragedy that some issues like immigration have become partisan,” Mr. Stein said. “It’s impossible to make progress politically.”
When asked why she thought refugee admissions have become more partisan, Ms. Brown said she thinks the biggest reason is the changing nature of the Republican Party.
“I think the Republican Party has just become a much more kind of viciously anti-immigrant party in sort of every regard,” she said. “People have decided that refugees are the enemy, and we don’t want to take people in.”
When asked the same question, Mr. Stein said the Democratic Party has been “historically anti-immigrant.”
“It’s easy to say someone is racist or anti-immigrant,” Mr. Stein said. “But the Republican Party has always supported immigration when it’s done respectfully and lawfully. The problem is when there is no enforcement [of the laws].”
Mr. Zheng has retained a lawyer to reopen his deportation case, toward which he has saved up money over six years and gathered community letters of support. Those letters include recent support from the Chinese Association of Greater Toledo, some of his customers, and his family.
He is still working with ICE, and, according to documents provided to The Blade, his next check-in date is in November. ICE declined to comment for this story.
First Published January 15, 2025, 4:13 p.m.
