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Ko Lyn Cheang

@kolyncheang.bsky.social
158 followers 45 following 18 posts

Reporter at @sfchronicle.com Past: Indianapolis Star, New Haven Independent, Yale Daily News. Email me at kolyn.cheang@sfchronicle.com

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Ko Lyn Cheang @kolyncheang.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
NEW INVESTIGATION: My colleague @stjbs.bsky.social and I spent months reporting on how ICE has failed to pay medical providers for detainee care since October, causing what the agency called an "absolute emergency" and, by its own admission, endangering lives. www.sfchronicle.com/politics/art...
sfchronicle.com
ICE hasn’t paid for detainee medical care since October. Advocates call it the ‘death policy’
ICE owes millions in unpaid bills to hospitals and, in some cases, detainees themselves have been directly billed for care, records show.
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Ko Lyn Cheang @kolyncheang.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
"Tucked within SFO’s International Terminal is a windowless room officials call an “in-transit lounge.” Immigration lawyers and the people who’ve been detained inside call it a jail." Read: @xianleonard.bsky.social @saradinatale.bsky.social @sfchronicle.com. www.sfchronicle.com/politics/art...
sfchronicle.com
Under Trump, SFO is now a de facto immigration detention center
More than two dozen immigrants have been held at San Francisco’s airport this year for longer than three days, in violation of Customs and Border Protection’s guidelines.
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Ko Lyn Cheang @kolyncheang.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
ICE is now targeting foreign citizens with expired travel visas for detention, even when they have U.S. spouses, no criminal records, no removal order and have pending applications for legal immigration statuses. with @saradinatale.bsky.social www.sfchronicle.com/politics/art...
sfchronicle.com
At least 11 Bay Area residents have been detained in ICE airport crackdown
Bay Area politicians, attorneys and activists are warning immigrants with unresolved immigration issues to avoid traveling through airports.
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Ko Lyn Cheang @kolyncheang.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
A proposal to reopen S.F.'s Great Highway, now home to Sunset Dunes Park, to cars on weekdays has qualified for the November election. This will be the 3rd time in 4 years that San Franciscans have voted on whether to allow cars on the highway. @sfchronicle.com www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/g...
sfchronicle.com
Great Highway controversy to return to S.F. voters this November — once again
A proposal to reopen the Great Highway has qualified for the ballot this November.
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Ko Lyn Cheang @kolyncheang.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
In May, an asylum seeker from Mexico left her Santa Rosa home before sunrise with her three children to attend her U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement check-in. For days, the single mom hadn’t been able to sleep, certain she’d be arrested. @sfchronicle.com www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...
sfchronicle.com
ICE took her from her children. Here’s how lawyers raced to free her
The Bay Area Habeas Network, launched May 1, aims to file a habeas corpus petition for every person illegally detained by ICE in the Bay Area.
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Reposted by Ko Lyn Cheang
San Francisco Chronicle @sfchronicle.com · 13/07/2026
The Bay Area Habeas Network, launched May 1, aims to file a habeas corpus petition for every person illegally detained by ICE in the Bay Area.
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ICE took her from her children. Here’s how lawyers raced to free her
The Bay Area Habeas Network, launched May 1, aims to file a habeas corpus petition for every person illegally detained by ICE in the Bay Area.
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Ko Lyn Cheang @kolyncheang.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Jose Guadalupe Ramos-Solano, who died in ICE custody in March, died of COVID pneumonia, an autopsy I obtained shows. ICE's official report shows no indication he was tested or treated for COVID in detention. See more details in our database. @stjbs.bsky.social www.sfchronicle.com/projects/202...
sfchronicle.com
Deaths in ICE custody have surged. The Chronicle is tracking them
Detainee deaths in ICE custody have surged since 2025. The Chronicle is tracking them all here.
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Ko Lyn Cheang @kolyncheang.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
I spoke to three people who were targeted by this sophistcated new scam that cost one of them almost half a million dollars. Her life savings. These fraudsters impersonated the San Francisco consul general and Indian authorities. Read more: @sfchronicle.com www.sfchronicle.com/us-world/art...
sfchronicle.com
Professor details scam horror that cost her nearly a half-million dollars
This scam, which has proliferated in immigrant communities, involves criminals impersonating the San Francisco consul general while linking victims to broad money laundering investigations.
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Ko Lyn Cheang @kolyncheang.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Exclusive: Leaders of powerful S.F. Chinatown business group threaten to quit amid legal battles. @sfchronicle.com www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s...
sfchronicle.com
Exclusive: Leaders of powerful S.F. Chinatown business group threaten to quit amid legal battles
Some leaders of San Francisco’s Chinese Chamber of Commerce are demanding that former president Donald Luu be permanently removed from the organization’s board.
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Ko Lyn Cheang @kolyncheang.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Exclusive: Immigration attorney stopped and searched at SFO, told by DHS he was on ‘watchlist’ w @stjbs.bsky.social @sfchronicle.com www.sfchronicle.com/us-world/art...
sfchronicle.com
Exclusive: Immigration attorney stopped and searched at SFO, told by DHS he was on ‘watchlist’
An advocate said the Oakland man may be the first immigration attorney to be detained for a non-random secondary screening at an airport since Trump took office.
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Ko Lyn Cheang @kolyncheang.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Deaths in ICE detention have surged. @sfchronicle.com is tracking them here. The database is the foundation of a Chronicle investigation by @stjbs.bsky.social and myself about medical delays, missed and misdiagnoses and other failures that drove record deaths. www.sfchronicle.com/projects/202...
sfchronicle.com
Deaths in ICE custody have surged. The Chronicle is tracking them
Detainee deaths in ICE custody have surged since 2025. The Chronicle is tracking them all here.
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Ko Lyn Cheang @kolyncheang.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Indian Americans are the fastest growing group in the Bay Area and helped drive Silicon Valley’s growth. But their trajectory is now at risk. The first in our five-part series “The Indian Bay” published today. Read it at @sfchronicle.com: www.sfchronicle.com/projects/202...
sfchronicle.com
Their rise reshaped the Bay Area and fueled Silicon Valley. Is it ending?
No U.S. region is more Indian than the Bay Area. Now the tech and immigration pipeline that fueled their rise is facing a new test.
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Reposted by Ko Lyn Cheang
The Sidney Hillman Foundation @sidneyhillman.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Congratulations to @stjbs.bsky.social and @kolyncheang.bsky.social of @sfchronicle.com on winning the May Sidney Award for their devastating exposé of deaths in ICE custody from medical neglect.
hillmanfoundation.org
San Francisco Chronicle wins May Sidney for Exposing Preventable Deaths in ICE Custody
NEW YORK — St. John Barned-Smith and Ko Lyn Cheang of the San Francisco Chronicle win the May Sidney for exposing the medical neglect behind deaths of detainees in ICE custody.  The reporters obtained...
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Reposted by Ko Lyn Cheang
St. John Barned-Smith @stjbs.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
🧵Missed diagnoses, delayed treatment and poor medical care are driving record deaths in ICE custody. @kolyncheang.bsky.social and I spent months investigating the deaths of ICE detainees across the US. Over and over again, we found lapses in treatment that proved fatal.
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Reposted by Ko Lyn Cheang
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
Important investigation into failures with ICE medial care that have likely caused multiple deaths. I'll note that these failures are common in the criminal justice system, and are just as deadly there, which is one reason why a solution is to heavily restrict the use of immigration detention.
The pain started soon after immigration agents seized the bespectacled 39-year-old man, who had lived in the United States since he was 5, at the Orange County car wash where he worked last August.
They took him to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, where he developed an abscess under the skin on his left buttock. It filled with pus and bacteria, rotting muscle and fat as it pushed into his pelvis and abdomen, threatening to flood his bloodstream with toxins.
Ayala-Uribe complained to medical staff about rectal pain, rating it “10 out of 10,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement records show, but documents do not indicate he was ever physically examined by staff members at Adelanto. On Sept. 18, a nurse gave him over-the-counter painkillers and fiber supplements used to relieve digestion problems, then sent him back to his cell.
Three days later, sweating and trembling, Ayala-Uribe was finally taken to a hospital. While waiting for treatment, he suffered septic shock caused by the abscess, according to a coroner’s report, and his heart stopped.
“This case is just absolute medical malpractice,” said Dr. Barbara Ogur, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who reviewed his treatment records at the Chronicle’s request.
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Ko Lyn Cheang @kolyncheang.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
My colleague @stjbs.bsky.social and I spent months working on this new @sfchronicle.com investigation into each of the 48 deaths in ICE custody since the start of 2025. Powerful work as well by our data viz colleague Nami Sumida and @santiagomejia.bsky.social www.sfchronicle.com/projects/202...
sfchronicle.com
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