ATLANTA—An immigrant who sought freedom and an escape from persecution for himself and his family came within minutes of being sent back Thursday afternoon to the authorities who have beaten him in the past.
Louis Lu Yu was to be sent to Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport to catch a plane bound for Seoul with a connection to Shanghai, while his wife, children and a few friends visited the U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement field office in Atlanta to ask for mercy.
Federal officials postponed the plan, but Yu is still in federal custody. The judge who is responsible for his case was on vacation during the attempted deportation.
Upon Yu’s close call with deportation, his wife Zhou Feng wept, said Xu Dan, who accompanied Zhou to the immigration office. Xu said Zhou was very sad and no longer felt that America could save them. The couple’s 12-year-old son Jason was very quiet. “He does not know what to do,” said Xu.
Zhou has hired a third lawyer, “a local lawyer with no language barrier with the judge,’ said friend Sam Lu. The lawyer will file an appeal.
Early in the morning on June 15, Yu was driving toward a park to practice Falun Gong (Also known as Falun Dafa). Immigration enforcement agents pulled him over, made him leave his car in a gas station lot, and took him into custody.
According to the court, Yu is to be deported. Zhou believes both their lives would be in danger if they returned to China.
Yu, 38 years old, is quick to smile, genial, with a few threads of gray in his hair. His wife Zhou Feng, 42, had their second child in March. They have practiced Falun Gong, a spiritual practice of exercise and meditation, since the mid-nineties.
Falun Gong helped bring Yu and Zhou together. Zhou said, “Because of our destiny, we wanted to practice this meditation together, so we got married.”
In 1999 the Chinese Communist Party began a brutal campaign to eradicate the practice. Zhou and Yu experienced the persecution firsthand and decided to leave China to escape it.
This year the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning the persecution of Falun Gong, the third such resolution passed by Congress since the persecution began.
Since his arrest, Yu has not been allowed to speak to the press. Zhou gave an interview through an interpreter on June 19, while Sam Lu cradled her newborn daughter Sophie.
The couple and their son came to the United States from Shenzen, Guandong Province on a tourist visa. They applied for political asylum. “We knew even fake Falun Gong practitioners had gotten asylum, so we thought we didn’t need a lawyer,” said Zhou.
With limited English and no expert advice, they applied. The judge denied their request, thinking that their experiences in China were not harsh enough to justify the United States granting asylum.
After that shock, Yu hired a lawyer to file an appeal. He thought he had time. A series of errors by him and his lawyers led Yu to miss a court hearing, and he unknowingly became an illegal immigrant.
Zhou seemed tired and subdued during her interview. Mostly she relied on her interpreter, but when she spoke of the asylum denial, her eyes flashed and she spoke in English, “Louis said, ‘I said everything truthful.’ There is no reason.” She said she admired America, and yearned for democracy, but felt disappointed.
Zhou said she had a very good medical job in China. She had no economic motive to come here. She said she just came for freedom and human rights. “This persecution shouldn’t even be taking place in China. Since we are here already, sending us back shouldn’t happen,” she said.
After the Communist regime banned the practice on July 20, 1999, Yu set out to appeal to the central authorities, an ancient right in China. Citizens have the right to visit Beijing to ask for justice or redress of problems.
In that spirit, he got on a train, but police took him off the train and beat him for 15 days. They gave him paper towels to clean his blood from the police station floor. He was sentenced to detention, for trying to go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong. His employer, a big real estate company, let him go.
He tried once more, and once more was arrested and detained. After that he and Zhou kept practicing Falun Gong at home. She said “It is very dangerous to go out so we stopped.”
But they were being watched. Repeatedly police picked him up and held him in hotel rooms during “sensitive” days, a common practice in China. Sensitive days—days during which the regime fears there might be popular unrest—might include national holidays, big state or Chinese Communist Party meetings, or an anniversary such as that of the Tiananmen Massacre on June 4.
For the couple, the last straw came when a policeman visited the hospital where she worked. She said he shocked her by saying, “Do you still practice Falun Gong? You have been monitored these many years. We are still monitoring you.” They applied for tourist visas, intending to ask for asylum here, Zhou said.
When they got to America, they threw themselves into volunteer activities for Falun Gong; rallies, parades, staffing “Quit the Communist Party” booths, too many activities to name, Zhou said.
Yu also wrote articles for The Epoch Times. He was very proud of establishing a real estate section for the Atlanta edition of the Chinese-language paper.
Because of these public activities, Zhou said, Lu would be at grave risk if he were deported. She said many children of Falun Gong practitioners in China have become orphans, because of their parents dying in custody.
She looked at her sleeping infant. “The girl is so small,” she said.
Louis Lu Yu was to be sent to Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport to catch a plane bound for Seoul with a connection to Shanghai, while his wife, children and a few friends visited the U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement field office in Atlanta to ask for mercy.
Federal officials postponed the plan, but Yu is still in federal custody. The judge who is responsible for his case was on vacation during the attempted deportation.
Upon Yu’s close call with deportation, his wife Zhou Feng wept, said Xu Dan, who accompanied Zhou to the immigration office. Xu said Zhou was very sad and no longer felt that America could save them. The couple’s 12-year-old son Jason was very quiet. “He does not know what to do,” said Xu.
Zhou has hired a third lawyer, “a local lawyer with no language barrier with the judge,’ said friend Sam Lu. The lawyer will file an appeal.
Early in the morning on June 15, Yu was driving toward a park to practice Falun Gong (Also known as Falun Dafa). Immigration enforcement agents pulled him over, made him leave his car in a gas station lot, and took him into custody.
According to the court, Yu is to be deported. Zhou believes both their lives would be in danger if they returned to China.
Yu, 38 years old, is quick to smile, genial, with a few threads of gray in his hair. His wife Zhou Feng, 42, had their second child in March. They have practiced Falun Gong, a spiritual practice of exercise and meditation, since the mid-nineties.
Falun Gong helped bring Yu and Zhou together. Zhou said, “Because of our destiny, we wanted to practice this meditation together, so we got married.”
In 1999 the Chinese Communist Party began a brutal campaign to eradicate the practice. Zhou and Yu experienced the persecution firsthand and decided to leave China to escape it.
This year the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning the persecution of Falun Gong, the third such resolution passed by Congress since the persecution began.
Since his arrest, Yu has not been allowed to speak to the press. Zhou gave an interview through an interpreter on June 19, while Sam Lu cradled her newborn daughter Sophie.
The couple and their son came to the United States from Shenzen, Guandong Province on a tourist visa. They applied for political asylum. “We knew even fake Falun Gong practitioners had gotten asylum, so we thought we didn’t need a lawyer,” said Zhou.
With limited English and no expert advice, they applied. The judge denied their request, thinking that their experiences in China were not harsh enough to justify the United States granting asylum.
After that shock, Yu hired a lawyer to file an appeal. He thought he had time. A series of errors by him and his lawyers led Yu to miss a court hearing, and he unknowingly became an illegal immigrant.
Zhou seemed tired and subdued during her interview. Mostly she relied on her interpreter, but when she spoke of the asylum denial, her eyes flashed and she spoke in English, “Louis said, ‘I said everything truthful.’ There is no reason.” She said she admired America, and yearned for democracy, but felt disappointed.
Zhou said she had a very good medical job in China. She had no economic motive to come here. She said she just came for freedom and human rights. “This persecution shouldn’t even be taking place in China. Since we are here already, sending us back shouldn’t happen,” she said.
After the Communist regime banned the practice on July 20, 1999, Yu set out to appeal to the central authorities, an ancient right in China. Citizens have the right to visit Beijing to ask for justice or redress of problems.
In that spirit, he got on a train, but police took him off the train and beat him for 15 days. They gave him paper towels to clean his blood from the police station floor. He was sentenced to detention, for trying to go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong. His employer, a big real estate company, let him go.
He tried once more, and once more was arrested and detained. After that he and Zhou kept practicing Falun Gong at home. She said “It is very dangerous to go out so we stopped.”
But they were being watched. Repeatedly police picked him up and held him in hotel rooms during “sensitive” days, a common practice in China. Sensitive days—days during which the regime fears there might be popular unrest—might include national holidays, big state or Chinese Communist Party meetings, or an anniversary such as that of the Tiananmen Massacre on June 4.
For the couple, the last straw came when a policeman visited the hospital where she worked. She said he shocked her by saying, “Do you still practice Falun Gong? You have been monitored these many years. We are still monitoring you.” They applied for tourist visas, intending to ask for asylum here, Zhou said.
When they got to America, they threw themselves into volunteer activities for Falun Gong; rallies, parades, staffing “Quit the Communist Party” booths, too many activities to name, Zhou said.
Yu also wrote articles for The Epoch Times. He was very proud of establishing a real estate section for the Atlanta edition of the Chinese-language paper.
Because of these public activities, Zhou said, Lu would be at grave risk if he were deported. She said many children of Falun Gong practitioners in China have become orphans, because of their parents dying in custody.
She looked at her sleeping infant. “The girl is so small,” she said.
Zhou Feng and her newborn American daughter are not subject to deportation.
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