Hundreds Rally for Boy, 6, Who Was Separated From His Father by ICE

“Taking children from their families is not normal,” a speaker told the crowd in Queens, where Yuanxin Zheng attended school until being detained.

Hundreds of people gathered at a Queens playground on Sunday to protest the federal government’s forced separation of a 6-year-old migrant boy from his father after the two were arrested last month amid President Trump’s deportation crackdown.

The boy, Yuanxin Zheng, is among the youngest migrants to be stripped from a parent by federal immigration authorities in New York City since the crackdown began. He and his father, Fei Zheng, were detained at what they believed was a routine check-in on Nov. 26.

Yuanxin was enrolled at Public School 166 in Astoria at the time, and some of those who came out in the chilly sunshine to join the rally, at the playground on 35th Avenue, had a connection to the school.

Camille Hlavka, who helped organize the event, has a 6-year-old son who attends the school.

“Taking children from their families is not normal,” Ms. Hlavka told the crowd. “It is cruelty. It doesn’t matter if it’s one child, it doesn’t matter if it’s a child you know. This is a human being, and he is being traumatized.”

Addressing the demonstrators, Sam Rasiotis, whose 6-year-old son also attends P.S. 166, condemned the Trump administration’s actions as antithetical to the ideals of a country shaped by waves of immigrants.

“Many of us can trace back our roots several generations, and some of those generations were persecuted and mistreated when they came to this country, to the city,” Mr. Rasiotis, a union organizer, said. “But here we are again. I never thought my son’s generation would face such barbarism.”

Government records show that after Mr. Zheng failed to comply with an order to leave the country, he and his son were separated, in line with a Trump administration tactic meant to pressure undocumented immigrants to follow such orders.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency arrested at least 140 children in the New York City area since Mr. Trump’s second term began in January through mid-October, according to federal data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley. More than 2,600 were arrested nationwide in that time.

Mr. Zheng and Yuanxin were initially taken into custody in April after they entered the United States illegally via Mexico and were discovered by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Dulzura, Calif., according to federal documents. Mr. Zheng told federal agents that he had come to America because he was afraid of being tortured in his native China.

Immigration officials ruled that his fear was not credible, and an immigration judge affirmed the determination. Mr. Zheng does not have a criminal history, according to government records.

He and his son had been in and out of detention at least twice before being taken into custody last month at ICE’s New York City offices at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, according to government records and Mr. Zheng’s lawyer.

The lawyer, Mike Gao, said his client had refused to board an ICE flight to China in September because he feared government retribution there. ICE tried to get Mr. Zheng on a China-bound plane again in October, but again he refused, documents show.

When ICE agents arrested Mr. Zheng and Yuanxin last month, Mr. Zheng became aggressive with officers and hit his forehead against a wall, according to internal records. Several officers put him in handcuffs, and Mr. Zheng said he wanted to die, records show.

Federal officials want to deport Mr. Zheng and his son together later this month, according to records that indicate the government plans to reunite them for a flight to China.

In a statement last week, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman emphasized that migrant parents had the option of leaving the country with their children and that Mr. Zheng had been “given a lawful order of removal as a family unit.”

As of last week, Mr. Zheng was at an adult detention center in Orange County, N.Y., and Yuanxin was being transferred to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which holds unaccompanied immigrant children, according to federal documents.

“We understand that Yuanxin is safe, but he is being held somewhere where nobody who knows him or cares about him can see him or give him a hug and make him feel safe,” Devora Fein, a leader of the western Queens chapter of Indivisible, the anti-Trump group that organized the rally, told the crowd. “He is not the only one.”

Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, who is facing trial on a federal misdemeanor charge after a standoff with immigration agents at 26 Federal Plaza, discussed his own case and how it tied into Yuanxin’s.

“We’re not going to let ICE or Donald Trump or anyone else separate us or divide us from each other,” Mr. Lander, a Democrat, said.

Among those in the crowd was William McKernan, a 17-year-old high school student who lives in Astoria and attended P.S. 166.

“Kids shouldn’t be kidnapped,” he said. “I used to go to 166 and want to show up because I hate seeing this happen in my neighborhood, in my school and in my country.”

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