Syracuse, N.Y. — Lixing Chen went to his immigration appointment Sept. 15 just as he had the three times before, said his son, Andy Chen.
Andy drove. When Chen went into the building for his appointment, Andy waited in the car, he said. He watched the glass door of the ICE building in a suburban office park for two hours.
Andy’s dad did not come out.
Finally, Andy said, a federal agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement came out to the car and told him his father had been detained.
That was the second time in less than two weeks that ICE had detained a Syracuse-area Chinese restaurant owner at their regularly scheduled ICE check-in, relatives and a community advocate told syracuse.com.
On Sept. 2, Dan Chen (no relation) was detained when she went to her regular ICE check-in, according to Tai Shaw, a businessman and advocate in Syracuse’s immigrant community who knows the family.
The Manlius mother co-owns a Chinese restaurant on Syracuse’s North Side, Shaw said.
Both restaurant owners had been cooperating with ICE for years, their family and Shaw said. Andy Chen said his father had been checking in with ICE over the phone consistently, but the check-ins recently switched to in-person.
This summer, owners of two other Upstate New York Chinese restaurants were detained by ICE.
Like Chen, they have been participating in the immigration system, not hiding. Chen had been going to his appointments and calling in as required for years, his son said.
Andy Chen said his father, who is 52, had no idea he would be detained and taken to jail when they went to the appointment. He had all of his paperwork with him, but nothing else. He had no opportunity to prepare his family to handle the business, his son said.
In Syracuse and across the nation, reports show that ICE is increasingly detaining people for deportation when they appear at their scheduled check-ins. There’s also been a marked increase in detention of people who have been in the U.S. for decades.
The mass detentions began in July after ICE issued a memo requiring the detention of people who entered the U.S. illegally, regardless of how long they had been in the U.S. or their participation in the immigration system, according to a copy of the memo obtained by the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
“The people impacted by this policy include those who have lived in the United States for years, are employed, and have family and other community ties,” the association wrote in a brief on the memo.
This describes the Syracuse-area Chinese restaurant owners detained this month. Both have been participating in the immigration system, trying to fix their status, family members and advocates said. They weren’t hiding; they were working part of their communities for more than two decades, records show.
Lixing Chen and his wife own their own home where they raised two U.S. citizen children. Dan Chen’s life is much the same: She and her husband are raising three U.S. citizen children in a home they bought in the suburbs of Syracuse. Both families have children in college.
Last week, after that ICE agent came to Andy Chen’s car window, the college student had to call his mother and tell her Chen, who had been in the U.S. for more than 30 years, was not coming home
Marie L. Ferguson, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Chen was detained because ICE had ordered him removed in 1994 and he had exhausted his appeals in 2012.
Ferguson said Chen was in Broome County Jail in Binghamton and that he soon would be deported.
But Chen’s son said a paperwork error is keeping his father locked up. He said his dad had a deportation order from 1994, but that an immigration judge decided Chen could stay.
The record from that judge, though, is filed under a different spelling of his name than his deportation order, his son said. So the ICE agents who picked up his father didn’t have the record that said his father was allowed to stay, the son said.
Ferguson, the ICE spokeswoman, did not respond to questions about the potential paperwork mixup.
Two weeks before Li Chen was taken from his ICE appointment, the same thing happened to Dan Chen. She and her husband run the China House restaurant in Shop City on Syracuse’s North Side.
Dan Chen, 45, has been in the U.S. for 25 years, Shaw said. She is raising three children in the home she and her husband own.
On Sept. 2, Dan Chen went to her regular ICE appointment to check in. But she was detained and eventually sent to an ICE detention center in Louisiana, Shaw said.
Shaw, a Syracuse-area businessman and immigration advocate who is on the state’s Asian American and Pacific Islander Commission, wrote a letter to the immigration court judge and officers on Dan Chen’s behalf:
“Mrs. Chen is not a person who has ever or will ever be a danger to another person in our community,” Shaw wrote. “To the contrary, she has contributed to the local economy through a business she owns with her husband and she has paid taxes. She has also embedded herself in our community as a neighbor, friend and parent who cares about her children, school and community, as we all do.”
Shaw said the family is hoping that a judge lets Dan Chen out on bond while her case is decided.
Her husband is running the family’s restaurant while they wait.
Dragon China, though, could not survive while Lixing Chen is locked up.
His son said the family closed the restaurant last week. The “Open” sign that was lit seven days a week is now dark.
