(Kennett, Missouri) One morning in May, Carol did not show up at work, at John’s Waffle and Pancake House.
However, this 45-year-old woman was as reliable as the sun that rises on the rice and melons fields in her adopted city, Kennett, a conservative agricultural center of 10,000 inhabitants in southeast Missouri.
Since her arrival from Hong Kong, 20 years ago, she had rebuilt her life in Kennett and had founded a family there, accumulating two waitress jobs in addition to making households. Every morning, she was used by smiling gags at the Pacans and read the newspapers left by customers to improve her English.
“Everyone knows Carol,” says Lisa Dry, municipal councilor of Kennett.
The American dream of Carol Hui, 45 years old – his birth name is Ming Li – ended on April 30, when the Federal Immigration Agency summoned him to the office of St. Louis, three hours drive from Kennett.
His spouse, a Guatemalan immigrant, considered this convocation with distrust. “But I didn’t want to save myself,” said Mr.me Hui, on the phone, prison. I wanted to do the right thing. »»
She was arrested and imprisoned pending her expulsion.
Photo Jamie Kelter Davis, The New York Times
During the detention of Ming Li Hui, whom people call Carol to Kennett, his colleagues wore t-shirts claiming his release.
The wave of support and petitions from this pro-Trump region seems to have borne fruit: after a month in detention, it was released on Wednesday. This is a stay.
Carol is back in Kennett, but his detention put a rural county of the Missouri in the face of the reality of the massive evictions ordered by Donald Trump, a policy supported in theory by many voters of this region which voted for him at 80.5 % last November.
Photo Jamie Kelter Davis, The New York Times
You could still see an electoral poster “Trump-Vance, obviously” in front of this house in Kennett, in Missouri, on May 25.
It is 22 more percentage points than the result obtained by Trump at the very republican state of the Missouri.
Carol or Trump?
Many are wondering: can we support both Carol and Donald Trump?
“I voted for Donald Trump, like almost everyone here,” explains his friend Vanessa Cowart, who frequents the same church as Mme Hui. But no one voted to expel mothers. We thought we were just getting rid of gangs, people who passed the border in mass. »»
“But it’s Carol,” she adds after a break.
Photo Jamie Kelter Davis, The New York Times
Vanessa Cowart, friend of Carol Hui who frequents the same church in Kennett
Adam Squires, a former candidate for the town hall of Kennett, sees things differently. He has nothing against Mme Hui, he said, but he voted Trump as 80 % of the voters of the patelin and he was happy to see the eviction campaign reaching the region.
They vote Trump, then they get angry when he begins to act. You have to get rid of all illegal immigrants. This is only the beginning.
Adam Squires, former candidate for the town hall of Kennett
According to Mme Hui, the summons she received gave no explanation. At the immigration office, an agent brought him into a secure area and told him that he would be helped to obtain a passport. Then she was told that she was detained: her tourist visa had long been expired; She would be expelled.
During his detention, his name appeared on the prayer lists of the churches of Kennett. Her absence was felt in her son’s baseball matches, where she was not in the stands, and when her elder diplomas are handed over, in 3e secondary, where she could not see her son receiving a prize in agricultural sciences.
Photo Jamie Kelter Davis, The New York Times
The Sainte-Cécile Catholic church organized a prayer vigil for Carol Hui during her detention and provided meals to his family.
Mme Cowart was her godmother when Mme Hui converted to Catholicism at the start of the year. She reads the Gospels in her Bible in Chinese and is a regular on Sunday morning mass, as is her spouse and their three children born in the United States: a 7-year-old girl and two boys aged 12 and 14.
Mme He was very interested in the first Christian martyrs, explains Mme Cowart: “She smiled and said,” God will take care of us. ” »»
Tourist visa and white wedding
According to the government, Mme Hui does not have an exemplary past. He is criticized for having arrived in the United States from Hong Kong in February 2004, then for having paid an American citizen $ 2000 to contract a white marriage in 2005. She hoped that this marriage would confer the status of permanent resident, then that she could go to Hong Kong to see her dying grandmother and then return to the United States, according to documents deposited in court.
According to his lawyer, Raymond Bolourtchi, Mme Huch was young and desperate at the time, and she recognizes that this gesture was reprehensible. “Not one day goes by without her remorse,” he says.
Mme Hui has never been charged with her white wedding (followed by a divorce in 2009). According to her file in court, she has no criminal record and has rebuilt her life with her current spouse.
Nevertheless, she worked, which is prohibited for tourist visa holders, and hers had expired. Its status in the United States has thus become a disputed issue.
Many residents of Kennett have been outraged that a working mother be owned by the immigration services. They describe it as the ideal immigrant in this rural city where the population knows such a decline that the only hospital has closed its doors.
“It is exactly the type of person you want to see the countryside arrive,” says Chuck Earnest, a farmer. I do not understand how his case can be part of Trump’s expulsions. »»
The church of Mme Hui organized a prayer vigil for her and provided meals to her family. At the restaurant where she works, her boss organized a “day for Carol”, during which a fundraising reported nearly $ 20,000. Petitions for his release had been placed on all tables, next to the jam and ketchup: hundreds of customers have signed them.
Photos Jamie Kelter Davis, The New York Times
Carol Hui’s deck, in the back shop of the restaurant where she works. On the right, one of the copies of the petition for its release which had been deposited on all the tables.
“This woman has the biggest heart in the world,” said Liridona Ramadani, whose family runs the John’s Waffle and Pancake House. “Democrats, Republicans, everyone was there for Carol. »»
Finally, not everyone.
When the local newspaper Delta Dunklin Democrat Published an article on his detention, readers have gone there from a deluge of 400 comments, most of them sympathetic to Mme Hui. But not all.
“If you are illegally, expect to be sent back,” wrote a reader. “This is what happens when you are in a country where there are laws,” said another. Another still wrote “Bye”.
The online debate has become so harsh that the owners of the restaurant implored people to avoid political comments.
In prison, Mme Hui was surprised that his arrest sparked so much sympathy in Kennett: “I didn’t know they loved me. »»
Only a handful of inhabitants of Kennett speak Cantonese, she says. This is the reason why, on her arrival, she used the first name Carol, that she had chosen herself, a little girl in Hong Kong, when the city was still a British territory.
She and her spouse found a family. He also works in catering in Kennett. (His immigration status is not clear and he did not wish to express themselves in the context of this article.) Their house in Kennett is decorated with the good mentions obtained by their children at school.
Photo Jamie Kelter Davis, The New York Times
The sign welcoming Kennett informs visitors that it is in this small town in Missouri that the singer Sheryl Crow was born.
According to the archives of the immigration court, Mme Hui asked asylum in 2009, saying that her mother in Hong Kong had beat her and threatened because she was a girl and was afraid of returning. The judge rejected his request in 2012 and ordered his expulsion. Despite numerous legal setbacks, she managed to stay in the United States thanks to various stays and government permissions, explains Mr.e Bolourtchi, his lawyer.
The most recent to his file was valid until August 2025, but on the day of his arrest, Mme Hui was informed that permission was revoked, said Me Bolourtchi, who, during the detention of her client, asked the reopening of her file to the immigration authorities.
Solicited about Mme Hui, the immigration services did not respond.
During her one-month stay in prison, the hardest part was to be separated from his family, she said.
According to Me Bolourtchi, she was released as part of a federal temporary asylum program for immigrants from Hong Kong and a few other countries. This stay does not guarantee its future in the United States.
“It is not won, far from it. But at this point, I am optimistic. It is a sigh of relief. »»
This article was published in the New York Times.
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