Secretive hearing weighs fate of workers caught up in St. Peters ICE raid

Several of the men and women scooped up in ICE’s September raid of a Chinese buffet in St. Peters were set to be deported yesterday. However, after a secretive hearing in federal court, they will be staying in the U.S. at least a little bit longer. 

That hearing was sealed and a reporter for SLM was promptly ejected after seeing only its prelude: Roughly one dozen people in orange jumpsuits seated in the jury box, with nearly as many lawyers milling about in U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia Cohen’s courtroom on the ninth floor of the Thomas Eagleton courthouse in downtown St. Louis.

But as phone calls from attorneys outside the courtroom made clear, the closed-door hearing was focused on the raid of Golden Apple Buffet. (The lobby remained open to the press and public, even as the courtroom did not.) 

On September 2, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and FBI agents raided the popular buffet in St. Peters, as well as a pair of homes owned by the restaurant in various St. Charles County suburbs. Guo Liang Ye and De Jin Ye, both 56, were indicted soon thereafter on felony charges of “bringing in and harboring aliens.” Fox 2’s Chris Hayes previously reported that neighbors said they saw as many as 20 men staying in one of the homes prior to the raid. The Yes have since been released on bond and their business is back open.

According to court records, nine people who have been detained since those raids had sealed hearings in front of a judge yesterday morning. They were represented by court-appointed attorneys, many of them defense lawyers who are common sights in St. Louis-area courthouses. 

“It’s something really new to this jurisdiction that hasn’t happened a lot here,” said attorney Mick Henderson. “We’re all doing our best to try to make sure that each party’s interests are represented.” 

The hearings lasted nearly four hours, and the lawyers who’d been inside the courtroom said that close to a dozen people were the focus, none of them facing actual criminal charges. They are, however, being held in jail, apparently under the “material witness” designation that allows people to be held in custody for periods of time in order to secure their testimony.

One lawyer said his client is a material witness whom the Yes’ attorneys are asking to remain in the country long enough to give a deposition or potentially testify at trial—something the men and women can’t do if they are deported. That attorney seemed to be gathering information about where one of the detained men could stay if allowed out of jail in the interim. 

SLM asked one lawyer if the worry was that the witnesses would get picked up by ICE if they were let out of jail. The lawyer retorted, They already were picked up by ICE.

Henderson said that his client is an Indonesian woman in her late 20s, early 30s. Prior to yesterday’s hearing, she had been scheduled to be deported that day. Henderson can’t speak for the other detainees, but said he knows his client at this point wants to go back home: “Every day in jail is another day, and, you know, her mom’s waiting for her at home in Indonesia.” 

Henderson said that his client, as well as the others who had hearings yesterday, would be staying in the U.S. until at least next week Friday, to give the defense time to take their depositions. 

An October 8 email from federal prosecutor Dianna Edwards to attorneys John Rogers and Scott Rosenblum, who are representing the Yes, describes the detained workers as “witnesses/victims,” noting that they don’t need to invoke the Fifth Amendment to refuse to answer questions. 

“I can’t tell your associates how to ask questions but it should be more like ‘Hey, my name is _, I represent _, and I would like to ask a few questions,’” Edwards wrote. “‘Are you OK talking to me?’ If they say yes, great. If they say no, we are done.”

Edwards described some of the witnesses as scheduled for voluntary departure in two days, on October 10. “Since the government isn’t deporting them, filing the material witness designation would fall to you,” she wrote. She added that such a filing would have to be made quickly, writing, “Time is ticking.” 

But not everyone caught up in the raid is departing voluntarily. Jim Hacking represents five of the detainees present at yesterday’s hearing and says one of them is fighting to stay in the U.S. Those represented by other lawyers could be as well. The sealed nature of the case makes it difficult to discern. Hacking says there is reason to think his client is here legally. 

Court filings made by attorneys for the buffet owners claim that at least some of the detained individuals provided them with work authorization cards, social security cards, or other identification when they were hired. 

Hacking has argued that his client, a 23 year-old Indonesian man, came to the U.S. seeking asylum. The man received a visa in August 2023 and work authorization valid through 2030 this past April.

In August, Hacking wrote in court filings, the man learned via Facebook of a job opportunity at Golden Apple Buffet, which included wages, tips, and housing at a company-owned house in St. Charles County.

Hacking’s client arrived at that company-owned house in late August, just a few days before the federal authorities themselves arrived at the property with a bartering ram.