ICE targets Hong Kong exiles in US despite deportation protections

Por Phelim Kine and Eric Bazail-Eimil — POLITICO – TOP Stories

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is sweeping up Hong Kong citizens who are allowed to live and work in the U.S. — potentially setting them up for immediate deportation once that legal status expires in February.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have detained at least a dozen such people at U.S. airports since June, according to lawyers who have represented the detainees in immigration court. ICE agents have threatened to hold them indefinitely unless they self-deport — despite a Biden-era presidential directive that allows them to live and work in the U.S. until Feb. 5, 2027, according to the lawyers and detainees.

“ICE officers forced me to sign a voluntary departure document,” said one Hong Kong citizen who was detained while trying to board a flight at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport in July. “They said ‘If you don’t sign this, you’re going to prison for months.’” The individual was granted anonymity due to their concern about possible reprisals by ICE.

Academic researchers have identified at least two dozen other people from Hong Kong who were detained this year, though it’s unclear if they fit the qualifications for protection or if any of them are now in custody.

The detentions are the latest example of how the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement is testing legal boundaries, while targeting even small communities from countries with political systems that the U.S considers oppressive. Only about 3,800 Hong Kong citizens were in the U.S. as of 2021, according to the latest figures available from the State Department.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, declined to comment on specific cases but said in a statement that the work authorizations granted to Hong Kong citizens do “not confer legal status in the United States.” The department added: “DHS is not precluded from placing aliens with such temporary administrative designation into removal proceedings.”

DHS has made similar arguments in court pleadings. In multiple cases, however, judges have ordered the Hong Kong detainees released.

The Deferred Enforced Departure for Certain Hong Kong Citizens directive, instituted by President Joe Biden, says that the risk of persecution by the Chinese government is too high for these people to return to Hong Kong. In recent years, Hong Kong has increasingly cracked down on public protests and jailed hundreds of dissidents for public speech against the government — such as wearing a T-shirt with the phrase “liberate Hong Kong.” The Hong Kong Democracy Council, a Washington-based pro-democracy nonprofit organization, estimates that there were more than 1,900 political prisoners in Hong Kong as of September.

Advocates for Hong Kong’s exile community say many of those in the U.S. were active in mass pro-democracy protests that roiled Hong Kong in 2019 and 2020 and face possible arrest if deported.

The 12 Hong Kong citizens whose cases POLITICO was briefed on all have been released from ICE custody because of rulings by immigration courts, but they are forced to wear ankle monitors and are restricted from traveling outside of their immediate area. ICE detained them for between 10 days and two months.

Lawyers for these individuals say they fear DHS is laying the groundwork to deport them once the directive’s protections expire.

“DHS’s position in every one of these cases has been ‘he’s not removable but he’s removable,’ by which they mean that they can’t legally put them on a plane until February 2027, but in the meantime they can put them in prison until then, and then put them on a plane,” said Samuel Bickett, a lawyer who represents some of the Hong Kong citizens in exile in the U.S.

Evelyn Wiese, director of the immigrant justice program at the San Francisco-based nonprofit Asian Law Caucus, said that “ICE is taking an expanded view of who can and should be detained.”

“It’s part of a broader trend where ICE is purposefully detaining folks where the detention is not legally defensible but because many folks are intimidated and can’t get lawyers in time, ICE is able to remove more people,” she said.

Biden granted the legal status for Hong Kong citizens in 2021 and later reupped it twice. It gives all Hong Kongers who were in the U.S. as of Jan. 15, 2025, the right to live in the U.S. and to apply for work permits due to concerns about “the significant erosion of those rights and freedoms in Hong Kong.”

The recent spate of detentions marks a sharp pivot in the administration’s policy toward this small community. As recently as April, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is also under DHS, issued a notice in the Federal Register providing details on the work authorization application process for Hong Kong citizens covered by DED.

The arrests and more visible ICE presence in Hong Kong exile communities have provoked considerable fear among Hong Kong citizens. News of the detentions have circulated widely on social media channels popular with the U.S. Hong Kong community.

“I have friends who are from Hong Kong on DED who haven’t stepped outside for weeks or even months because ICE is literally in the street outside their homes,” said Frances Hui, policy manager at a Washington-based nonprofit pro-democracy organization, the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation.

University of California Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project has used Freedom of Information Act requests to identify 38 Hong Kong citizens detained by ICE from Jan. 1 to Aug. 6, though without details about why they were detained.

Since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, the U.S. has deported citizens of Iran, Cuba and other repressive regimes back to their home countries and revoked protections for citizens from 13 countries where conditions were previously ruled unsafe due to conflicts or national disasters.

State Department officials have told Bickett and representatives of the Hong Kong exile community that the administration won’t extend DED when it expires in February.

“We have a pretty clear signal from the administration that they are not considering an extension,” said Hui, of the Hong Kong democracy nonprofit.

The State Department and the White House referred queries to DHS. DHS did not address a question about whether the DED program will be renewed.

DHS has repeatedly argued that it is not violating any statutes. One of the detainees said his arresting ICE officer told him that DED “‘did not give him any status” to stay in the U.S., according to a petition filed by lawyers shared with POLITICO. A DHS motion to oppose the release of another detainee with DED argued “DED is not a status. There is nothing preventing the government from placing Petitioner in removal proceedings as he violated the terms of his visa.”

Former officials familiar with immigration policy toward Hong Kong argue the administration is misinterpreting the law.

Detention of these Hong Kong citizens “is inconsistent with DED status — If you’re here on DED, you’re here legally — those are the terms,” said Hanscom Smith, former U.S. consul general in Hong Kong during both the first Trump administration and the Biden administration. He’s now a fellow at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs.

In Hong Kong, many dissidents — including the former media magnate Jimmy Lai, whom Trump asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping to release from prison — were jailed for violations of the territory’s 2020 National Security Law, which treats anti-government speech as sedition.

Efforts to advocate for the rights and freedoms of people in Hong Kong on Capitol Hill once garnered considerable bipartisan support. As a senator, Secretary of State Marco Rubio teamed up with then-Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) in cosponsoring the Hong Kong Safe Harbor Act in 2021 that would have fast-tracked Hong Kong exiles for refugee status or non-immigrant visas.

But for now, Democratic lawmakers are sounding the alarm — alone.

“I’ve been working for months to get Hong Kongers, Uyghurs and Chinese out of ICE detention centers and prevent them from being deported to China where they could face torture or worse,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the congressional Tom Lantos Commission on Human Rights.

On the Senate side, Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley introduced legislation last week to provide Hong Kong citizens under DED a path to permanent residence status.

“America cannot just abandon Hong Kongers who sought refuge here,” Merkley said.

No Republican has co-sponsored Merkley’s legislation. Democrats hope that the electoral math for the bill could improve if they take back control of one or both chambers of Congress.

“Perhaps with a Democrat-controlled House, there is a chance for it to proceed because Republicans probably won’t be supportive of it, but they won’t necessarily oppose it either,” Hui said.

Fonte: POLITICO – TOP Stories