Chinese Muslims, after finding a refuge in Queens, now fear Trump

New York: They survived reeducation camps in China's western Xinjiang region. They were released from detention centers and psychiatric hospitals. They watched their loved ones disappear one by one and feared when it would be their turn.

Then they managed to get out of China and reached the soil of the United States, many by trekking through the brutal jungle in Panama known as the Darién Gap on their way to the US southern border.

They are Hui Muslims, a state-recognized ethnic minority group in China, where the government is determined to crack down on Islam. As President-elect Donald Trump promises to build detention camps and enlist the military to carry out mass deportations, the future of this group of immigrants is precarious. Deportation could mean years in jail or labor camps.

"My mother told me to stay here," said Yan, a single mother who came to the United States in July with her 10-year-old son, Masoud, through the Darién Gap. "'If you come back,'" she quoted her mother as saying, "'there'll be no good outcome for you. Who knows -- they might even sentence you to life imprisonment.'"

In China, Yan was detained by police for 15 days, then sent to a psychiatric hospital for more than 20 days because her phone showed that she had made small donations to two online Quran prayer groups. Police said she supported religious terrorists and called her a "radical religious fanatic." She considers herself not very religious and doesn't even wear a head scarf.

A growing number of Chinese are migrating to escape bleak economic prospects and political oppression. Many have joined Venezuelans, Ecuadorians and Haitians trying to reach the United States through the Darién Gap. More than 38,000 Chinese migrants were temporarily detained on the southern border of the United States in the 2024 fiscal year, up from 24,000 the previous year, according to US Customs and Border Protection. It's not clear how many of them are Muslims.

Many Hui Muslims are making the crossing with their families.

On a recent Friday afternoon, Yan and Masoud were among the 15 adults and six children who had gathered at a three-story house in Flushing, Queens, in New York City. Most of them had stayed there, a shelter for Muslim immigrants from China, just after arriving in the United States. They get together on Fridays with newcomers to chat, pray and discuss their lives, faith and current affairs. Then they cook a big meal with the flavors of northwestern China's cuisine: beef noodles, spicy chicken and steamed buns.

The shelter offers the immigrants free boarding for the first two weeks before they can find places to settle down. Known as Home of Muslim, it also serves as a community center where they can seek solace and support one another.

They exchange personal stories, often full of trauma, sorrow and anger, said Ma Ju, the founder and a financial backer of the shelter. Once, he walked into the living room, he said, and saw a group of women in one another's arms, weeping.

Ma, a businessperson and a critic of the government's policies to make Islam in China more Chinese, started the shelter in February 2023 as more Chinese came from the southern border. More than 350 people have stayed at the refuge. Most of them are Hui Muslims, though some are Uyghurs, Tibetans or Han Chinese.

"They are all traumatized," Ma said. "But sometimes, they didn't even know what they experienced was oppression and discrimination."

Of the roughly 25 million Muslims in China, 11 million are Hui, who have a big presence in the northwest but also live in enclaves around the nation. The Hui are better integrated into Chinese society than Uyghurs, the biggest Muslim group, who live primarily in Xinjiang. Unlike Uyghurs, who are ethnically Turkic, the Hui look similar to the country's dominant ethnic group, the Han. The Hui haven't faced the same degree of persecution as the Uyghurs, but the crackdown on Islam has shaken the group.

The Chinese Communist Party fears ideological competition from any religion. Across the country, the government has demolished minarets and domes of mosques, banned the public use of Arabic script, forbidden children to attend Quran schools and sent the most religious Muslims to reeducation camps.

That Friday afternoon at the shelter, Yong, a Hui Muslim from Xinjiang, was one of the cooks. For years, he operated a successful halal restaurant in Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital city. Nearly 90 per cent of his customers were Uyghurs, he said. When the government expanded reeducation camps in 2017, his customers started to dwindle in number. A year later, nearly 80 per cent of them had disappeared, he said.

Then Yong's three uncles and his brother-in-law, all Hui Muslims, were sent to reeducation centers for going to mosques "too often" or for having studied at religious schools when they were young. His mother was taken to the local police station for questioning after she was spotted wearing a scarf at home. She was released after making a written promise that she would not wear a scarf again.

"At that time, my wife and I were living in constant fear," Yong said, "feeling like even the slightest misstep could get us into serious trouble." He and his wife arrived in America in May 2023, having transited the Darién Gap. He now drives an ambulance in Queens, and his wife works at a halal restaurant in New York City.

Most people I interviewed for this column asked that I use only their given names for fear that their family members in China could face harassment or worse punishment from authorities.

Another cook at the shelter was Ye Chengxiang, a Hui Muslim from northwestern Qinghai province. In 2017, authorities destroyed the minaret on the mosque of his hometown. Then in 2022, Ye, also a restaurant owner, was forced to take down its halal sign amid a campaign to ban Arabic script.

Ye, 43, grew up listening to horror stories about his older family members' experiences. He was determined to leave the country. It took him a decade to get Chinese passports for his family of four. On Dec. 11, 2023, he arrived in San Diego with his wife and two teenage daughters by way of the Darién Gap.

"There were moments on the road when it felt like I was going to die, completely unable to keep going," he said. "But after I got to this land of freedom, the hardship was nothing. Totally worth it."

In November, his wife, Sophie, gave birth to their third child. He recently opened a halal restaurant in Rego Park, Queens, with other Muslim immigrants. Another group who stayed at the shelter opened a halal noodle restaurant in Manhattan.

But Ma, the founder of the shelter, said Muslim migrants faced obstacles in making lives in America. Pork dishes, which many Muslims don't eat, feature heavily in most Chinese restaurants. One former resident of the shelter, with Ma's help, found a job at a warehouse -- and was called "a terrorist" by co-workers, Han Chinese immigrants, on his first day.

After Trump won the election, Ma said, his phone rang almost nonstop for a week. The callers were anxious. They spoke little English, so they had limited access to official information.

Ma said he had invited a lawyer to the shelter to explain the importance of applying for political asylum. Most Chinese migrants entering the United States from the southern border are released on parole by immigration authorities. Then they can apply for asylum. Under the current protocols, the lawyer told them, once they had a pending case, they should be protected from deportation.

"It would be lying if anyone says they are not scared," said Yan, the single mother. "Everyone is on edge." She said she would accept being deported but would make the painful decision to have someone adopt her son, who has problems learning, if it meant he could stay in the United States.

"My son has to stay here," she said. "Going back would mean no chance of survival for him."