By Momo Chang

California has spent an estimated half a million dollars imprisoning and rehabilitating Xiao Fei "Eddy" Zheng, presumably with the goal of his successful reentry into society. And now that he's finally been paroled, the government wants to deport him to China, a country he barely knows anymore.

Zheng is like the 45,000 other noncitizen inmates each year who are released from prison only to be passed over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a branch of the Department of Homeland Security. Yet unlike many others, he has a good lawyer and numerous Bay Area supporters who are challenging the almost automatic practice of deporting noncitizens – including legal residents like Zheng – who have committed crimes.

Zheng was 16 years old and had been in the country just four years when he and two friends kidnapped and robbed a San Francisco family of four. He was tried as an adult on 16 charges and handed a stiff 7-years-to-life sentence, made even stiffer by tough-on-crime politicians who consistently denied him parole and kept him in prison for 19 years. He was finally paroled March 8 but was simply transferred from one cell to another. Now he awaits a May 9 hearing before an immigration judge in San Francisco that will decide whether he will remain in the United States.

While doing time, Zheng was a model prisoner: he picked up both a high school diploma and an A.A. degree, directed the church choir, participated in the SQUIRES (San Quentin Utilization of Inmate Resources, Experiences, and Studies) program, which exposes troubled youths to the harsh realities of prison life, and even wrote a 70-page curriculum for at-risk youths, which he hopes to implement one day, particularly if he's allowed to accept one of three Bay Area job offers he received to work as a counselor and youth coordinator.

"My goal is to have my own nonprofit community center one day to help deter Asian youth from a life of crime," Zheng told the Bay Guardian from behind Plexiglas in the San Francisco ICE building. "In the meantime, before I reach that goal, I'd like to tour schools and juvenile halls and talk to people."

As a result of his good work and charismatic personality – as well as his high-profile struggle to create an ethnic studies program at San Quentin, a fight that attracted media attention and landed him in solitary confinement – Zheng has plenty of people on his side.

In 2004, Zheng received 130 letters supporting his parole, including 12 from state legislators such as Mark Leno and John Burton. The Asian and Pacific Islander community, in particular, has taken up his cause. Supporters include Yuri Kochiyama, a longtime social justice advocate, and author and activist Helen Zia. They argue that he should be given a chance to be reintegrated into society.

"It's a shame that Eddy is not somewhere else – in community centers, in high schools, in other places where his leadership skills could be put to better use," said Junichi Semitsu, who teaches a course on Asian Americans and the law at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. Semitsu showed up at the first procedural hearing March 16.

By law, all "criminally-charged aliens" face deportation. The process can be as simple as a deportation hearing at which the defendant is ordered removed from the country within 24 hours, or it can involve a hearing and several appeals.

"Whether you're here illegally or have legal status but you're an alien, if you've committed a felony, that makes you subject to removal," Lori Haley, spokesperson for ICE, told us. "The law is the law, and the opportunity for the person to plead their case is in front of the immigration judge."

Zheng is actually one of the lucky ones in that his family had the resources to get him a good lawyer. According to an Executive Office for Immigration Review report generated for the Bay Guardian, just 13 percent of "criminally-charged aliens" last year were allowed to remain in the country. The same report shows that defendants with legal representation are 10 times more likely to be granted relief.

"It's virtually impossible for someone to represent themselves in a case like this," Victor Hwang of Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach told us. "Most immigrants being deported don't speak English and don't have a lawyer."

Zachary Nightingale, the attorney representing Zheng, told us judges look at several factors when deciding a case.

"The single most important factor is usually rehabilitation," Nightingale said. "But the judges also look at the seriousness of the offense, the length of time the person's been in the U.S., the family ties, the community ties, their work history, their volunteer history, whether there was any military service, how recent the offense was, and how many offenses they have in total."

According to those standards, it seems Zheng has a good chance of being granted relief. However, Nightingale added that the judge's ability to consider any of these factors is often unclear in the post-9/11 era of heightened concerns over immigrants.

"He's done the crime, he's done the time," Hwang said. "There's no reason for this double penalty to be imposed."

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