Immigrant detainees taking flight in art

In front of a freedom banner, an eagle sculpture spreads its wings, each feather painstakingly rolled out of paper.

In New York last week, I stopped by the Museum of Chinese in America, whose current exhibition, “Fold,” features folk art by Chinese asylum seekers who made headlines a quarter-century ago when their cargo ship, the Golden Venture, ran aground near Rockaway Beach in Queens, the end of a journey that began in Thailand, stopped in Kenya and sailed around Africa before arriving on these shores.

Many of the shipwrecked people were held in immigration detention facilities for more than three years — a terrifying limbo that resonates today. According to the ACLU, the use of immigration detention centers has grown exponentially in recent years, holding people for prolonged periods of time without any finding that they are either a danger to society or a flight risk — tearing apart families and making it impossible for individuals to fight those cases.

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that immigrants — including those with legal status — do not have a right to periodic bond hearings — and as such, the government can detain them indefinitely.

Also last week, Vietnamese refugees filed a class-action lawsuit that challenged their detention by federal immigration authorities. Since March 2017, refugees from Vietnam have been subjected to prolonged and indefinite detention. Meanwhile, President Trump continues to whip up xenophobia as he proposes a misguided overhaul of the immigration system. At the Conservative Political Action Conference, he compared immigrants to a snake nursed back to health that sinks its deadly fangs into his trusting caregiver.

Trump and supporters of his policies dehumanize immigrants. But art gives us their stories, their hopes and their dreams.

Seeking a way to express themselves and relieve the tedium and uncertainty about their future, the Chinese detainees from the Golden Venture began making these intricate sculptures, out of scraps from magazines and legal pads, using techniques of paper folding, or zhezhi, and paper-mache. Eventually, the detainees were allowed to use child-safety scissors, under the supervision of their guards. The detainees gave the sculptures to activists and pro bono attorneys, supporters known as the People of the Golden Vision.

“These are just average-Joe Americans, not people who go around with ‘Save the Whales’ T-shirts and ‘Save the Rain Forests’ T-shirts, wondering what’s the next cause they can sign up for,” lawyer and activist Craig Trebilcock told the Baltimore Sun in 1995. “These are people from the heartland who feel their government has gone astray.”

In total, more than 10,000 sculptures were exhibited and sold at fundraisers, raising $135,000, to help pay for legal costs, sent to detainee families in China and helping them transition upon their release.

I marveled at a towering pagoda in miniature, a dragon, a bicycle with working chain and wheels, a beautiful hanging lantern, the Statue of Liberty, a pineapple with the Chinese characters “Double Happiness,” and caged birds.

After learning that notes slipped into the air vents of their cells ended up outside, a detainee penned this poignant one: “Save us!!! We have been unlucky,” which was found by the Rev. Joan Maruskin, who was leading a demonstration outside.

I lingered before a model of the Golden Venture, with a blue-and-white hull and a rainbow string of flags, as well as a Chinese junk, conveying the historical legacy of the seafaring culture and emigration from Fujian province. Leaving behind bandits, flood, famines and war, Chinese have been coming to the United States for more than a century and a half, in search of Gold Mountain and the American Dream.

Here in the Bay Area, in the early 20th century, Chinese were detained in crowded barracks on the Angel Island Immigration Station. For months and even years, immigration authorities interrogated Chinese immigrants repeatedly, looking for any excuse to keep them out. In their loneliness, humiliation and pain, those detainees began carving poems into the wooden walls: “America has power, but not justice/ In prison, we were victimized as if we were guilty/ Given no opportunity to explain, it was really brutal/ I bow my head in reflection but there is nothing I can do.”

Though detainees lost their freedom, they could not be silenced, and I found their art inspiring — their will to survive reaffirmed the need to tell and to share their stories.

“My hope for this exhibition is to inspire those who have lost trust in our government and its policies,” writes Andrew Rebatta, the assistant curator, in the exhibition’s program guide. “Through building meaningful relationships, and building community with those around us, we can bring change.”

I marveled at a towering pagoda in miniature, a dragon, a bicycle, a beautiful hanging lantern, the Statue of Liberty.