A six-year-old boy, separated from his father by US immigration authorities in New York just before Thanksgiving, has been deported to China alongside his parent after a traumatic ordeal that saw the child go 'missing' for over a week. The case of Yuanxin and his father, Fei Zheng, has ignited fury among New York officials and advocates, who condemn it as a stark example of the Trump administration's renewed tactic of using family separation to pressure undocumented migrants to leave the country.
A Routine Check-In Turns into a Nightmare
The father and son, who had entered the United States without legal permission earlier in 2025 and sought asylum over fears of torture in China, were attending a routine check-in appointment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in New York on the day before Thanksgiving. Fei Zheng was arrested and jailed in upstate New York, while his son Yuanxin, a first-grade pupil at a school in Astoria, Queens, was taken into custody.
For more than a week, the boy's whereabouts were unknown to his father and their lawyers. Immigrants' rights advocates eventually confirmed that Yuanxin was in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the agency responsible for unaccompanied children separated from their families by ICE. Jennie Spector, an advocate who maintained contact with Fei Zheng, stated that while the father managed to speak to his son twice by phone, officials never revealed the child's location.
Reunion and Swift Removal Amidst Controversy
After advocates and New York City officials, including Comptroller Brad Lander, rallied for their release, the pair were reunited. However, they were swiftly deported to China last week, according to Homeland Security officials. The agency's initial statement claimed Fei Zheng refused to board a plane and was "acting so disruptive and aggressive that he endangered the child’s wellbeing," even alleging he attempted to escape and abandon his son.
Contradicting this, internal records cited by The New York Times reported that Zheng hit his head against a wall and expressed a desire to die during his arrest in Manhattan. Advocates have fiercely disputed the official characterisation. "This was a family who wanted to contribute to their community," Spector told The City, blaming a "broken and punitive immigration system, a system that is now set up to cause as much harm as possible."
A Broader Pattern of Interior Enforcement
This case is not isolated. ICE has arrested at least 140 children under 18 in the New York City area since Trump's inauguration through to mid-October, as per data from the Deportation Data Project at UC Berkeley. Nationally, immigration authorities have arrested more than 3,800 minors, including 20 infants, in the same period.
Legal advocates describe this as an "unprecedented" return of family separation across the United States, extending beyond the border to target mixed-status families long settled in the country's interior. The policy forces impossible choices: leave children behind, potentially in foster care, or face removal as a family. This echoes, yet expands upon, the infamous "zero tolerance" policy of Trump's first term.
The fallout has been deeply personal. One of Yuanxin's teachers, speaking at a Queens rally, described a bright boy who loved to sing and dance and was a cherished part of his classroom community. His wife in China, learning of the deportation from a lawyer, was described by a friend as sounding "hopeless" and worried about their future. New York Public Advocate Jumaane Williams called the story "tragically emblematic" of cruel trauma and a lack of due process, while political candidates have renewed calls to abolish ICE.
