Tony Messenger | Post-Dispatch
Metro columnist
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ST. PETERS — Jim Hacking’s client did everything “the right way.”
Hacking is an immigration attorney. That phrase — the right way — is one he hears all the time from folks cheering President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants, highlighted by raids like the ones conducted in St. Peters recently. If immigrants only would do things “the right way,” the deportation cheerleaders say, they wouldn’t face such raids.
Hacking had several clients who lived in one of two St. Peters homes that were raided. Most of them were from Indonesia. They worked at the Golden Apple Buffet restaurant in St. Peters. All of his clients had proper authorization to work in the U.S.
One of them — I’ll call him John Doe — is still in the St. Genevieve County Detention Center, where ICE holds many of its immigrant detainees. On Monday, Hacking filed a federal lawsuit trying to get his client released on bond. The document lays out in detail that the man, likely facing deportation, is in the U.S. legally and should not have been detained.
Doe applied for a B1/B2 Visa in August 2023, and his application was approved. The visa allows a temporary stay in the U.S. for business, vacation or medical needs. Doe entered the U.S. legally at the Los Angeles International Airport on Oct. 26, 2023, where he was inspected by customs officials. About a year later, on Oct. 10, 2024, he filed for asylum, seeking protection from torture for ethnic and religious reasons.
On April 23 of this year, as his asylum case was making its way through the immigration system, Doe was granted work authorization in the U.S. In August, he received the job offer at Golden Apple, which included an hourly wage, tips and access to employer-owned housing. He had only been at work for a few days when the raid occurred in early September. He’s been in jail ever since.
The story is one that’s been repeated too many times across the country, with ICE conducting haphazard and sometimes violent raids and arresting U.S. citizens or other immigrants who are in the country legally. The courts, meanwhile, are often too slow in correcting the errors. While Trump promised to round up “violent” undocumented immigrants, the majority of immigrants in ICE custody do not have criminal records and many, like Hacking’s client, are here legally.
“The people who suffer are the poor people,” Hacking says.
Most of his clients in the St. Peters raid agreed to self-deportation even though they were here legally because they didn’t want to be stuck in jail for months.
“They did it the right way,” he says. “They didn’t come across the border. They applied for a visa, and they got one. These people had work authorization.”
There’s also this question: If Hacking’s clients have to follow the rules, why don’t the immigration courts?
Hacking argues in his petition that the courts are violating due process by flipping the burden of proof to obtain bond onto immigrants — even though in most cases it’s the government’s job to prove that a person is a flight risk or a danger to the community before holding them in jail.
Take the owners of the house where Hacking’s client used to live. Guo Liang Ye, 56, and De Jin Ye, 56, have been charged in federal court with harboring undocumented immigrants. Both have pleaded not guilty and have been released from custody. So the alleged criminals are free on bond — and their restaurant is re-opened — but the unsuspecting immigrant who was in the U.S. legally is still in jail.
“Why don’t they follow the rules?” Hacking says of the government. “My client did.”
He’s hoping a federal judge does what an immigration court wouldn’t do: allow his client to be free from confinement and given the opportunity to prove his case for asylum.
That’s how the system is supposed to work, Hacking says, if both sides are playing by the same rule book.
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Tony Messenger | Post-Dispatch
Metro columnist
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