Heng Guan, a Chinese national who documented a network of detention facilities in China's northwestern Xinjiang province, has spent months in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody as the Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) attempted to deport him.
Guan's second court hearing is set for Monday after a DHS prosecutor asked a court in December to deport him to Uganda under a third-country migrant deal.
That request was later withdrawn amid concerns raised in Washington, D.C., but ICE continued to push for Guan's deportation to China, according to his attorney, Chuangchuang Chen.
"I would jump off the plane if deported," Guan told DW in an exclusive interview from an ICE detention facility. "I would rather die than face imprisonment in China."
The 38-year-old amateur photographer from China's central Henan province entered the United States in 2021 by boat from Freeport in The Bahamas after producing a 20-minute vlog from Xinjiang, accusing the Chinese government of mass incarceration of Muslim Uyghurs.
Guan said he would face imprisonment if returned to China.
"I'm not disappointed with the US," he said, yet he believed remaining in America was his only protection against any retribution from Beijing.
Chen told DW that he did not expect the judge to issue a ruling on Monday "unless the authority dropped the case."
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