ICE Arrest Of Queens Father At Green Card Interview Spurs Rally

FLUSHING, QUEENS -- Chants of "Free Mr. You" rang out from Foley Square on Monday morning as activists and politicians protested a Queens immigrant father torn from his wife and two young children.

Xiu Qing You, 39, of Flushing, thought he was finally on the path to get his green card when he and his wife - a U.S. citizen - walked into an interview with Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month, the New York Daily News first reported. Instead, he was cuffed by ICE agents and shipped off to a New Jersey detention center, where he's been locked up ever since.

You now faces deportation to China, a homeland he hasn't called "home" for 18 years.

His wife, Yu Mei Chen, was among those rallying outside ICE offices at 26 Federal Plaza, calling on the agency to free You and allow him to be reunited with his 6-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son.

"I've had so much pressure to deal with," she told the crowd through a translator as she wept.

You and his wife arrived at that same office less than a month ago on May 23 for a green card interview they'd waited years to get, said his attorney Yee Ling Poon.

Chen said she was asked to leave so ICE could question her husband, and she never saw him again.

She's now tasked with caring for both children and running the couple's nail salon in Connecticut by herself, Chen told the Daily News. That often means staying up late into the night to help her daughter with homework that Chen said she struggles with herself because her English isn't as good as her husband's.

An ICE spokeswoman confirmed the May 23 arrest of Chinese national Xian Chin Yu, which Poon said is how U.S. government officials spell You's name.

You came to the U.S in January 2000 without a valid entry document, and proceedings to have him deported began that March, the spokeswoman said. In December of that year, an immigration judge ordered he be removed from the country. You filed an appeal, but it was turn down in less than a month.

He put in a motion to reopen his case in May 2008, but that was also dismissed months later in September, according to ICE. Fast forward ten years and deportation officers took You into custody in May pending his removal.

But in those years You built a life in the U.S, where he met Chen in 2006 and the two had a traditional Chinese wedding banquet a year later, Poon said. The two legally married in 2013.

Crowds gathered outside ICE offices in support of the couple, chanting, "Free Mr. You" and "What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!"

Several Queens lawmakers also put out statements in support of You.

"He has lived and worked here for 18 years and made a life with his life and children," Jenny Low, a spokeswoman for City Council speaker Corey Johnson, read in a statement. "Innocent families should never be kept apart by the U.S. government."

Nancy Conde, a spokeswoman for Kirsten Gillibrand, also read a statement from the senator: "I was heartbroken to hear about Mr. You's detention."

"Mr. You became another person caught in this cruel practice of separating people from their families."

Patch Reporter Kathleen Culliton contributed to this report.

(Lead image: Xiu Qing You's wife holds up a sign at a rally outside ICE offices to free her husband on Monday morning. Photos by Kathleen Culliton/Patch)