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 But, not for the first time, China failed to provide the necessary
documents, and three months later not one of those arrested has been
deported, and many have been released from custody. They form part
of a backlog of nearly 39,000 people Chinese nationals awaiting
deportation for violating U.S. immigration laws, 900 of them classed
as violent offenders, according to immigration officials.
The issue, which is likely to come up during a state visit to
Washington later this month by Chinese President Xi Jinping, has
further strained a U.S.-China relationship already frayed by
tensions over economic policy, suspected Chinese cyber hacking and
Beijing’s growing military assertiveness.
Meanwhile, China is pushing the U.S. on a different immigration
issue: the return of Chinese citizens it says are fugitives from
corruption investigations at home.
The June arrests, described by immigration lawyers, U.S. officials
and some of the arrestees themselves, grew out of meetings aimed at
speeding up a clogged process that has long frustrated the United
States.
 China has been extremely slow, U.S. immigration officials say, to
provide the proof of citizenship necessary to send visa violators
home. Some of the nearly 39,000 Chinese immigrants awaiting
deportation have been under orders to leave for well over a decade,
and the backlog continues to grow.
An apparent breakthrough came, officials say, at a March meeting in
Beijing between Sarah Saldana, director of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), and Zheng Baigang, a top Chinese Public Security
official. Their discussions produced a “memorandum of
understanding,” agreed to by both countries, to help expedite the
process.
In April, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson
traveled to Beijing, where his Chinese counterparts "agreed to begin
repatriation flights from the U.S. for Chinese nationals with final
deportation orders," said DHS Press Secretary Marsha Catron.
As part of that agreement, two Chinese officials traveled to the
U.S. to interview those arrested in the June sweep, along with more
than 50 others on the deportation list, including many with criminal
convictions in the United States. China promised their cases would
be resolved quickly.
In the past, an ICE official said, China has explained delays by
saying it can be difficult to verify citizenship, a process that
might require visits to distant villages and towns.
But one U.S. official suggested another reason for the holdups:
"They do not want these people back.”
A senior Obama administration official told Reuters, ahead of Xi's
visit, that the U.S. would like to see China move on this issue. “We
have made that very clear, and pressed them to do so," the official
said.
SWEPT UP
One of the immigrants detained in the recent sweeps was Daniel
Maher, who was arrested as he left for work from his San Francisco
Bay area home on June 2. Four uniformed immigration officials pulled
up behind his car, he said, shackled his wrists and legs and then
drove him to a U.S. deportation office.
 There, Maher says, he was searched along with 13 other Asian men and
put into a prison jumpsuit. "We were told there was a 99.9 percent
chance the travel documents were arriving to deport us to China,"
said Maher, who was born in Macau, a former colony of Portugal that
became a special administrative region of China after Maher
immigrated to the United States. "I was told I would need a jacket,
because the plane would be cold."
But Maher, who was convicted of holding up a San Jose, California
auto parts warehouse in the 1990s and served a six-year term before
being ordered deported in 2000, has since been released.
In a statement provided to Reuters, ICE said Maher was let go on
August 14 “after it became apparent the agency would not be able to
obtain a travel document in the foreseeable future to carry out its
repatriation.”
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U.S. frustrations over the massive deportation backlog come as
Beijing is pushing for more help in tracking down and repatriating
dozens of alleged fugitives living in the U.S. who are wanted in
China as part of a widespread crackdown on corruption dubbed
Operation Fox Hunt.
Officials in the U.S. put distance between the two issues, saying
there will be no ‘quid pro quo’ agreement to provide Operation Fox
Hunt suspects in exchange for cooperation on immigration violators.
But they acknowledged that there are parallel discussion on the
matters.
China, however, sees the two subjects as tied. In a statement,
China's Foreign Ministry said: "China believes that there should be
no double standards when it comes to the issue of handling the
repatriation of illegal immigrants," urging “support for China's
efforts to fight corruption."
U.S. officials say they are not averse to cooperation on Operation
Fox Hunt, but that despite requests, Beijing has failed to produce
the kind of evidence of criminality needed under American law to
support deportation.
There is no extradition treaty between the U.S. and China, and
Western governments have long been reluctant to hand over suspects
because of a lack of transparency and due process in China's
judicial system. In the past, Chinese government officials convicted
of corruption have sometimes been sentenced to death.
BRIEF COOPERATION
Anoop Prasad, a San Francisco immigration attorney who represented
Maher and others arrested in the June sweeps, says the Northern
California detainees were transferred to an ICE facility in
Adelanto, California, about a week after their arrest. There, they
were each interviewed by two Chinese officials during a brief moment
of cooperation between the two countries on the matter. They were
also each ordered to fill out applications for Chinese passports.
"Those interviewed were selected because ICE determined that there
was a significant likelihood of their removal in the reasonably
foreseeable future," an ICE spokesperson said in a statement to
Reuters.
And although no paperwork has yet come, the spokesperson added, "ICE
expects the Chinese will honor their commitment to issue travel
documents for those individuals confirmed to be Chinese nationals."
ICE acknowledges, however, that the backlog has been caused largely
because of Chinese failure to provide documents and proof of
citizenship.
Prasad said he believes his clients are being used as pawns in
international diplomatic negotiations between China and the U.S.,
with America looking for help to reduce the backlog, and China
wanting help in hunting down its corrupt fugitive officials,
although Prasad admits he has no proof of that.
Prasad also questions why Maher was targeted. Since his release from
jail in 2000, the attorney says, Maher, who is now married with a
family, has turned his life around, working full time since 2005 and
keeping all supervision appointments with ICE for the past 15 years.
U.S. officials say the two Chinese officials who conducted the
interviews returned home in August.
(Additional reporting by Elizabeth Dilts in New York, Matt
Spetalnick in Washington and Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by
Sue Horton)
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