More than 30 people died while detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2025marking it as the deadliest year for those detained by the agency in two decades. At least five of the detainees who died were Asian citizens: Ge Chaofeng, Nhon Ngoc NguyenTien Xuan Phan, Kaiyin Wong and Huabing Xie. Their deaths have so far received little public attention, even as ICE ramps up raids, expands capacity at its facilities and accelerates deportations across the country.
While I mourn these deaths, I have also witnessed how mass deportations have induced palpable fear throughout the Asian American community. Like Hispanic and Latino communities, as well as other immigrant groups throughout the United States, Asian families live under the constant threat of unlawful detention, family separations, neglect, abuse, and trauma in for-profit prisons.
In August, ICE guards found Chaofeng Ge, 32, hanging in a shower at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania. Although investigators ruled Ge's death a suicide, The autopsy report indicated that he was found tied hand and foot. behind his back. Despite these troubling circumstances, the federal government has yet to release complete records regarding Ge's death to his family. chaofeng brother filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in November seeking transparency and accountability, and complained that the prison did not offer Mandarin interpretation, leaving his brother isolated and possibly without access to medical care or mental health care while in custody.
A view of the CoreCivic Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego. The private institution has been plagued by accusations of medical negligence, abusive and retaliatory behavior against immigrants, sexual harassment, poor quality of food and water, and other dangerous conditions.
(Carlos Moreno/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Seven detained at the California City Immigration Processing Center have made similar claims, accusing ICE of inhumane conditions within its network of for-profit detention centers, including delayed medical care, inadequate food and water, and limited access to interpreters. Things are only likely to get worse unless the corporate profiteering driving mass arrests ends now.
Ge's death points not only to the dangerous conditions inside ICE facilities, but also to the broader climate of terror that mass deportation policies have instilled in large segments of our community. At the moment, 1 in 7 Asian immigrants living in the US are undocumented and under imminent threat of removal, and undocumented Asian students represent a significant proportion of the population, making up approximately 16.5% of those eligible for DACA benefits.
Given the widespread and devastating impact of ICE arrests, more than 70% of Asian Americans now disapprove of President Trump's immigration policiesarguing that their mass deportation practices have gone too far.
Trump's policies are largely a continuation of the immigration laws that have historically excluded Asian Americans. In the 19th century, our The country's first mass deportation laws targeted the surveillance, registration and detention of Chinese. living in the American West. My family's own immigration records from a century ago speak of my great-great-uncle's removal and my grandparents' detention at the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco.
Although my grandfather was a native-born American citizen, his girlfriend was imprisoned by armed guards for weeks because the government had racially profiled them as illegal immigrants. White witnesses were asked to testify about my grandfather's birthright citizenship, and my grandmother was asked to answer a 56-question interrogation correctly or else she would be deported. Poems by Chinese prisoners inscribed on the walls of the Angel Island immigration center speak of the fear and injustice they and thousands of others endured.
Roy Takeno, standing, addressing a group of people at a town meeting, Manzanar Relocation Center, California, 1943.
(Ansel Adams/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The use of deportations as a form of international segregation persists today, as politicians rehearse old stereotypes to scapegoat and expel immigrants. Again accused of “criminal” and “invading armies”, a wide range of Asian groups face racialized deportation practices that deny them their rights and fracture their families.
Consider Yunseo Chung, a 21-year-old Korean-American student and legal permanent resident of the United States. After she exercised her right to free speech while participating in student-led protests at Columbia University, ICE moved to revoke Chung's status and attempted to deport her several times. Only when chung sued the US government To avoid his deportation, he obtained a restraining order blocking his expulsion.
Another innocent trapped in this system is 6-year-old Yuanxin Zheng, a Chinese immigrant who arrived in New York City with his father in April. Even when they followed the proper procedures to obtain asylum, the family was forcibly separated by ICE on November 26. Among the more than 2,600 children arrested this year by ICE, Yuanxin is one of the youngest.. And although Yuanxin's panicked father was allowed a brief phone call with his son, he was left in the dark about the whereabouts of his son. ICE did not reunite the two until were deported together, more than three weeks later.
Immigration activists block a garage used by ICE vans during a protest against an alleged ICE raid on Canal Street on November 29 in New York City.
(Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
Southeast Asian refugees also face a form of double jeopardy under the current administration's policies. More than 15,000 Southeast Asiansmany of whom served prison sentences for crimes committed in their youth, face a second punishment: deportation orders.
For example, while serving 26 years in prison for murder, Phoeun You graduated from self-help programs, rebuilt her life, and demonstrated her commitment to change by being paroled. However, you were never able to hug his parents after his release. Instead, he was immediately deported to Cambodia, a nation he never knew, and was permanently separated from his family. “I went from a life sentence to a life sentence,” you told me when we spoke in February.
Last year, a survey by the Asian American Foundation reported that 63% of Asians now feel unsafe because of their race.. ICE's use of racial profiling and our nation's xenophobic climate have undoubtedly contributed to these anxieties.
The five deaths of Asian citizens in ICE custody in 2025 are not just isolated tragedies. They reveal a system that has expanded faster than oversight can keep up. Language barriers, delays in medical care, and lack of transparency within detention centers have already had fatal consequences. consequences. This broken system does not make America safer, but instead creates fear in entire communities. Racial profiling and punitive law enforcement practices by ICE do not create safety but instead inflict lasting trauma on families and generations like mine.
Ge's death demands justice, not only for his family, but also for an end to for-profit prisons, family separation, and the racist and violent application of deportations. Each of them is cruel and unusual punishment; together they constitute a morally bankrupt immigration system.
Russell Jeung is a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University and co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate.
