Immigration Detainee Shares Story


Join Eddy Zheng as he shares his words and vibes with the Boston Progress community about his inspiring story.

Eddy Zheng is a community organizer and writer in the Bay Area, who spent over 20 years as an inmate in California and an immigration detainee facing deportation. He was released from immigrant detention in 2007, but still faces deportation.

Eddy came to the US with his family when he was 12 years old. When he was 16, he participated in a robbery with his friends; he was arrested and pled guilty to all counts. Charged as an adult, Eddy was sentenced to 7-years-to-life in 1986. While incarcerated, he learned English, completed his GED, and earned a college degree. Eddy worked with at-risk youth in crime prevention workshops in prison, pushed for the creation of ethnic studies courses in the prison college program, and organized the first poetry slam at San Quentin state prison.

The campaign to win Eddy’s freedom was supported by the judge who sentenced him, the district attorney who prosecuted him, more than a dozen legislators, and many community leaders. Although he was sentenced to 7-years-to-life, Eddy served more than 19 years as a model inmate before he was finally granted parole in 2005, at the age of 35.

Instead of being released to his family and community upon his parole, Eddy was simply transferred to immigration detention and placed in deportation proceedings, even though the state of California officially decided that he was fully rehabilitated and posed no threat to society.

After two years in immigration detention, Eddy was finally released in March 2007. As a community organizer, he has been very active in violence prevention among at-risk youth. The mayor of San Francisco recently appointed him to the city’s Council on ex-offender re-entry. Eddy also edited a collection of writings by Asian American inmates, Other: an Asian & Pacific Islander Prisoners’ Anthology (foreword by Helen Zia).

Although Eddy was released from immigration detention, his deportation order is still in effect and he continues to face the likelihood of being deported.


Date: Friday, November 6, 2009
Time: 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Location: East Meets West Bookstore
Street: 934 Massachusetts Ave
City: Cambridge, MA