Federal Judge Halts Queens Immigrant Father's Deportation

FLUSHING, QUEENS -- A Flushing immigrant father whose arrest during a green card interviewevoked public outrage was temporarily spared from deportation and allowed to reunite with his wife and children.

A federal judge in Manhattan granted Xiu Qing You, 39, a last minute stay of deportation on Monday afternoon after Legal Aid Society lawyers argued his case. The China native will be allowed to stay in the U.S. while he waits for a court to review his petition that he was unlawfully detained after being cuffed in an interview with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on May 23.

The judge also ordered You be immediately released from ICE's detention center at the Bergen County Correctional Facility in New Jersey, where he's been held there away from his wife and their young children since his arrest, the Legal Aid Society said.

“Today’s ruling is a sharp rebuke of ICE’s cruel and fanatical crusade to circumvent due process with the goal of tearing families apart,”said Gregory Copeland, a supervising attorney of Legal Aid Society's Immigration Law Unit who worked on You's case.

Protestors and Congress members rallied around Yu Mei Chen, You's wife and a U.S. Citizen, who has been fighting for her husband's release since they walked into ICE offices to interview for his green card she'd petitioned for. Chen was asked to leave the room while agents interviewed her husband and never saw him again, she first told the New York Daily News.

“Mr. You has lived without incident in this country for years, establishing a family and building a successful small business," Copeland said. "Taking that away from him is the antithesis of what America should aspire to stand for."

You has lived in the U.S. since he fled China seeking asylum in January 2000, and attempts to have him deported have gone nearly as long, an ICE spokeswoman said. He and his wife run a nail salon in Connecticut, which Chen said she's been struggling to balance with caring for their 6-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son all by herself.

"I've had so much pressure to deal with," she tearfully told a crowd of protesters who gathered outside ICE's Foley Square office on Monday to call for her husband's release.

But now there's light at the end of a very dark tunnel, both for You, his family and other immigrants like him, Copeland said.

"This decision should also provide hope for other immigrants that the judicial branch remains a bulwark against inhumane treatment," he said.

(Lead image: A protester holds up a photo of You and his family in a rally at Foley Square on Monday calling on ICE to stop the Flushing immigrant father's deportation and free him from detainment. Photo by Kathleen Culliton/Patch)