SF College Student Faces Deportation

Steve Li, a 20-year-old City College of San Francisco student, was chasing his goal to open a medical clinic serving the immigrant community, when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials knocked on the door of his apartment. Now he faces deportation to a country where he has no friends or family. “One day I was getting ready to go to school to see my friends and teachers, and the next day I was locked in jail with criminals and gangsters and being treated like I wasn’t a person,” he said during a telephone interview with the S.F. Chronicle from a detention center in Florence, Ariz.

Li, whose legal name is Shing Ma Li, was born in Peru but came with his family to the United States on a tourist visa in 2002.  Li’s parents, Ma and Xin Guang Li, 55, emigrated from China to Peru in the late 1980s to escape financial hardships and the country’s one-child policy. Steve Li was born in the Peru and the family later fled because of political instability. They applied for political asylum but were denied in 2003 and they lost their appeal in 2004.

More than 7,000 Facebook users have signed up to support Steve Li in the last week and a half.

KJ