Hello, my name is Cedric Oneal. This is by far the hardest obstacle I have ever to overcome in my life. This kind soul pictured above is my wife. My advice to anyone marrying someone from another country is to make sure you do what I failed to do by checking the ever-changing immigration process. My wife is a Taiwanese national and I’ve known her since I was 25 years old. My mistake was thinking that once we got married, she would be grandfathered in. For anyone who is making a brave commitment to move from their country to the United States I beg of you to please do it the right way because the greatest joy I’ve felt in a very long time has been apprehended by DHS. To those of you who don’t think it could happen to you these are scary times so I urge you to get it right. 

With that being said, once we found the process of being grandfathered in had changed, we had to act as fast as possible by contacting USCIS to complete her I-485 and her I-130 for petition to work and petition for residency. If you decide that doing these forms by yourself and to answer questions wrong that could worsen your chances for your spouse. We found that out the hard way once our documents were rejected. Fast forward my wife reached out to people in the Taiwanese community here in Phoenix and we got a hold of a lawyer. We were given the cost of the paperwork and how much it would be therefore I started to try and save as much money as I could. Unfortunately, there was roadblock after roadblock, and eventually, my wife stumbled on to Chinese festivals that could help her financially. 

August 4, 2026 coming back from working a festival in Portland. My wife was apprehended after she came through the gates at Sky Harbor Airport. There was a 38 hour greyhound bus ride from Portland to Phoenix and I will beat myself up for the rest of my life for not finding my voice to tell her not to get on that airplane. As the days go by, and I don’t hear anything from my lawyer it almost seems inevitable that the money amount spent for our lawyers services could only go so far because my wife isn’t running away from terrorism from her country she only came here to spend the rest of her life with me, and I failed her. The sweetest kindest soul that I’ve ever known has been incarcerated going on 27 days to help me raise money for her citizenship. The first two weeks she was optimistic because we raised a good amount of money for our lawyer to try and get her out. Now, every time that I speak with her, I can hear it in her voice as she slowly breaking. My main goal now, is just getting her out  and getting her back home to Taiwan because she doesn’t deserve to be in there.