Irvine Teacher Arrested by ICE at Los Angeles International Airport: A Federal Court Ordered Her Immediate Release, and She Is Now Raising Money for Legal Help
Los Angeles — Jing Zhao, a citizen of China, works in special education in Irvine, in California's Orange County. On October 3, after arriving at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), in the city of Los Angeles in Los Angeles County, California, on a U.S. domestic flight, she was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers; video of the arrest then spread widely online. Thirteen days later, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ordered her immediate release.
According to the court's order issued on October 16 (Case No. 5:26-cv-05854-DTB), ICE officers arrested Zhao without a judicial warrant, without prior notice and without a hearing, and took her to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County. The order states that no final order of removal exists against Zhao; after her counsel filed a habeas corpus petition on October 4, the court directed the respondents to appear by October 7, but they never appeared or answered. U.S. Magistrate Judge David T. Bristow therefore granted the petition and ordered her immediate release.
Zhao entered the United States lawfully on a student visa around 2017 and filed an asylum application later that year; the case remains pending. She holds a work permit and a Social Security number and has worked and paid taxes in the United States. In interviews after her release, she said she has no criminal record and that the two weeks in detention left her with severe psychological trauma. The Department of Homeland Security, for its part, told the media that Zhao entered on a temporary visa in 2017 and did not leave when it expired, putting her in overstay status — a position not inconsistent with the court's findings of no final removal order and a pending asylum case; the dispute is over whether the detention itself was lawful.
After her release, Zhao launched a GoFundMe campaign in her own name in late October, registered in Huntington Beach, California, to cover her own continuing immigration legal costs and to help fellow detainees still in custody obtain legal advice and representation. She wrote that the people she met in detention — separated from their families and struggling through a complex legal system — had stayed with her, and that, now free, she could not simply forget them.
This was the second such case at a Southern California airport in two months: Chenxing Xu, also a Chinese citizen, was taken by ICE at Ontario International Airport on September 4 and held at the same Adelanto center for 56 days, before also winning release through a federal habeas petition on October 30. In both cases, the path ran not through the immigration system but directly to federal court. (Source: U.S. District Court for the Central District of California)
Related:
Chinese Woman Held by ICE for Nearly Two Months; Federal Court Orders Immediate Release
Source: U.S. District Court for the Central District of California
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：ICE执法人员在一处移民拘留设施内工作（资料图，非阿德兰托设施）。美国移民与海关执法局（ICE）官方图，公共领域，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: ICE officers at work inside an immigration detention facility (file photo; not the Adelanto facility). Official U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement photo, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
