I t was a cool Friday evening earlier this year when Kelly Yu finally returned to work. The Peoria sushi restaurant owner opened the front door of her strip-mall establishment. She slipped her black apron over her head, tied a bow, tightened it around her waist and threw on a baseball cap with her restaurant’s logo. After spending more than eight agonizing months away, Yu was home. The co-owner of Kawaii Sushi & Asian Cuisine had been locked up in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention center in Eloy since May 2025, more than 80 miles south of her restaurant. She spent nearly all of 2025 in ICE custody as the U.S. government tried, unsuccessfully, to deport her to China. What does she remember most about that first day back? “Tears, tears, tears,” Yu told Phoenix New Times. “Most of my customers came here to support me for fighting.” Her story became national news as restaurant patrons, U.S. Senators, congres- sional representatives and community activists from both sides of the aisle advo- cated for her release. Even amid the unbri- dled nightmare that Trump’s mass deportation machine inflicted on Americans in the past year — ICE agents shooting civilians, families being ripped apart, the White House falsely tarring critics as terrorists — Yu’s story stood out for its maddening disproportionality. This cheerful mom who shakes Cosmopolitans and runs miso soup to the lunch crowd in Peoria? This is who we built an $86 billion law enforcement Leviathan to bring to justice? To be fair to ICE — she came to them. She had an appointment, after all. She’d initially caught ICE’s attention during the final year of the Biden adminis- tration. ICE picked her up intending to deport her, but ultimately just detained her in Eloy while trying to get China to process her. After three months of failing to deport her, ICE released her. She wore an ankle monitor and began to meet with immigra- tion officials monthly at the agency’s field office in central Phoenix. The monthly meetings had become routine. That changed during Yu’s late May check-in. That was the month White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller ordered ICE leadership to increase the agency’s daily arrest quota drastically. Now, ICE aimed to arrest 3,000 people per day, triple the previous rate. To meet that quota, ICE leadership dropped Trump’s “the worst of the worst” charade of a campaign promise. Instead, agents began to round up anyone they could get their hands on, including people like Kelly Yu. In Phoenix, agents started showing up at the downtown Phoenix immigration court. They’d lie in wait for a person to leave their hearing and come in and scoop them up. ICE was also detaining people during their mandatory scheduled check-ins at the agen- cy’s field office in central Phoenix. On May 28, Yu drove down to the field office for one of those check-ins with her U.S. citizen husband, whom she married during her first detention in a Texas ICE facility. He’d voted for Trump six months earlier. (He declined to be interviewed for this story and asked not to be named.) Instead of heading back to work at Kawaii Sushi that afternoon, ICE shipped her to its detention center in Eloy. She’d be detained in the medium-security immigra- tion facility for nearly nine months. The facility, run by private prison company CoreCivic, has nearly 1,600 beds and has become notorious for allegations of abuse and dreadful conditions. After nearly nine months in ICE custody, Yu won her release through a habeas corpus petition in late February. Friends and family poured into Kawaii’s Peoria location — nick- named K2 — that Friday night to greet her. The following night, Yu wore an ornate red blazer jacket and clinked wine glasses with patrons at the full wrap-around bar. The restaurant was packed. But Yu’s extended detention, uncertain residency and the constant threat of depor- tation has put a chill on her life. She has taken a step back from her restaurant’s expansion to a third location in north Peoria and transferred responsibilities, at least on paper, to her 22-year-old daughter. (Her daughter also declined to be interviewed and asked not to be named in this story.) She knows she’s living with a shadow over her head. If the government decides they want to grab her again, they know where to find her. “Everybody knows me. Kelly is Kawaii. Kawaii is Kelly,” Yu said. “But I know that I’m living here, not stably. I could get picked up again any time.” AN ASYLUM CLAIM REJECTED Yu has been the face of Kawaii Sushi’s brand for the past 12 years, since she and her aunt, Lisa Selamat, bought the restau- rant’s first location, in Glendale. The menus vary slightly by location but mix Arizona favorites with Japanese-inspired sushi and traditional southern Chinese cuisine from a small town in Guangdong, near Hong Kong. Selamat came to the U.S. in 1995 after her husband, a U.S. citizen, sponsored her. In the Valley she worked in kitchens, including Good China in Peoria. Yu was still in Hong Kong, working for McDonald’s. “My first job here was in a restaurant, and I’ve always dreamed of having my own place,” Selamat said through her daughter-in-law Yanming Sita, who trans- lated from Kaiping, a Chinese dialect. “Back in China, I watched my mother work with food and plan to open a restau- rant, so I wanted to finish that dream in my own way. Kelly had the same dream, so we decided to build it together.” Why Is America So Afraid of Kelly Yu? ICE held a West Valley restaurateur in a hellhole for most of 2025. And they could return at any time. BY MORGAN FISCHER Kelly Yu is happy to be back at Kawaii Sushi & Asian Cuisine in Peoria after spending months in a notorious ICE detention center in Eloy. (Alan Staats)
