[1][2] His decade-long attempts to secure release from prison for crimes he committed at the age of 16 and to fight US deportation made his case a cause célèbre in the Asian American community.
He befriended other Chinese immigrant youths in his school, who began to push him towards crime such as petty shoplifting; Zheng was arrested for stealing a jacket from a Macy's store, and placed under probation.
[5] On the evening of January 6, 1986, Zheng and two friends broke into the house of a family who owned several shops in San Francisco's Chinatown by ambushing them with guns as they came home from work.
After several hours spent ransacking the house in unsuccessful attempts to find a safe they believed held cash, they forced the wife to drive them to one of the family's stores and unlock it for them so they could also steal goods from there, including expensive Chinese herbal medicines.
They were caught and arrested almost immediately after the commission of their crime, pulled over by a police officer for driving without headlights on the way back to their victims' house to drop the wife off.
[6] His parents attempted to keep his imprisonment a secret; in an essay written some years later, Zheng recalled how his mother lied to relatives that he was busy with school when he failed to show up for his grandparents' funerals.
[3] Zheng met Shelly Smith, a volunteer English tutor in 1999 and began to develop a friendship with her which would later blossom into a romantic relationship.
[3] One major incident came in March 2002, when he and fellow inmates began efforts to set up courses in Asian American studies for prisoners; they even circulated a petition.
This provoked prison officials to accuse Zheng and other signatories of organizing an escape attempt; their cells were searched, writings were confiscated, and Zheng was accused of having worked with his teachers in the prison education program to have writings smuggled out, allegedly contravening California Code of Regulations, Title 15, Section 3020, which states that "inmates may participate in the publication and distribution of an inmate publication only with the institution head’s specific approval".
A number of prominent Californians wrote letters in support of his parole, including then-California State Senators Mark Leno and John Burton, as well as activist Yuri Kochiyama.
[3] Zheng's release from San Quentin did not mean freedom; officers of the Department of Homeland Security immediately took him into federal custody pending deportation proceedings, and transferred him to the Yuba County Jail.
[18][19] On May 6, 2011, judges Mary M. Schroeder, Sidney R. Thomas, and Ronald M. Gould of the Ninth Circuit Court ruled that the case be returned to the Board of Immigration Appeals for a new hearing.
[21] Nightingale for his part reacted with optimism, stated that with the ruling in hand, Zheng had "a really good shot" at convincing an immigration judge to permit him to remain in the country.
[24] Zheng married his current wife Lisa Lee on December 31, 2012; San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Jane Kim performed the marriage.
[26] In March 2014, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution calling on California Governor Jerry Brown to grant him a full pardon and allow him to remain in the United States.
[28] New Breath Foundation publicly launched in November 2019 and funds multiple organizations including AAPI Women Lead, Survived & Punished, among others.
Increasingly aggressive enforcement of these laws in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks meant that a number of Asians who had grown up in the United States faced removal to countries in which they had not lived since they were children.
In interviews, the children described the effect of the crime on their parents, noting that they installed extensive security systems in their home afterwards and even once hired a private detective to protect them as they walked to school.