Chih-Ming Feng, known in the restaurant industry as Petey Feng, was deported this week to Taiwan after spending more than 130 days in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
As of Thursday, March 20, Feng is in Kaohsiung, a city 220 miles south of the country’s capital, Taipei, where his parents live. His mother and his sister are battling cancer.
From Taiwan, Feng said he feels blessed by the experience he had during these months of detention.
“The whole experience of living and working in America has been nothing but a blessing, including the detention center or jail part,” Feng told The News. “It humbled me and opened my mind to the right attitude toward life so I could start to learn, understand, and grow.”
Restaurant News
For years, Feng worked as a line cook at several restaurants in Dallas, including Bullion, Georgie, Quarter Acre, Carte Blanche, CBD Provisions and Charlie Palmer. He was well-known in the city’s high-profile restaurant scene.
He always said his dream was to help a chef earn a Michelin star in the city. Now, looking back and after what he’s been through, his perspective has changed.
“After getting so worked up about achievements and goals in life, in cooking, hoping to help Dallas win a Michelin star, I became greedy about what I wanted to do and numb or ignorant to what is more important to me,” Feng said.
Chih-Ming Feng, known in the Dallas restaurant industry as Petey, is a longtime line cook who was detained by ICE last month.
Toby Archibald
Feng was detained on Nov. 6, 2025, when he attended a follow-up appointment with ICE. He had overstayed his visa since 2010 and was arrested in Dallas for a misdemeanor DUI in 2023.
Since then, Feng had been required to attend follow-up appointments. And it was at one of those appointments that he was detained.
“I truly learned so much. To be more comfortable in my own skin, to have faith, to believe, to trust, to be patient, to find inner peace,” Feng said. “To pay attention to what life is teaching me through the things that happen to me and the people I meet, how to love and be loved through sharing with fellow inmates and interacting with officers.”
Feng said he didn’t have a bad experience in the federal jail or detention center with ICE agents, but overall, it was a tough experience, since he had no money, no lawyer, no family support, and no one to help him.
Then one day, he made a phone call that changed everything.
A long road
Throughout his time in ICE custody, Feng was supported by Leslie Brenner, a Dallas restaurant consultant and former restaurant critic for The Dallas Morning News, with whom he managed to communicate weeks after being detained.
“I was not inclined to pick up the call because it said ‘Prison/jail,’ but my son told me to pick it up,” Brenner told The News. “It was Petey. And I started trying to put things in motion, trying to find him some help.”
Friends and people in the city’s restaurant industry contributed to Feng’s cause, some depositing money so he could buy items from the commissary or communicate with people on the outside.
Restaurant critic Leslie Brenner and Chih-Ming “Petey” Feng, at the time a line cook at FT33, snapped smartphone photos of the shrimp with fried milk custard.
Ben Torres / Special Contributor
“Many people were helping him, and he was happy about that,” Brenner said.
Communicating with Feng was no easy task. Brenner became his point of contact with the outside world, and to gain access to the system, she had to provide personal information, show her driver’s license, and give her credit card number. Messages sent and received through the prison system cost 25 cents per 200 characters. That added up quickly.
“I could just imagine if someone has a relative or whatever who’s a detainee and you don’t speak very good English, or even the person on the outside trying to get them cash. It’s really difficult,” Brenner said.
Feng was detained at the South Texas Processing Center in Pearsall. He was later transferred to the La Salle County Detention Center in Encinal.
Brenner said Feng had a hearing on January 22, but he was never notified, so officials simply told him he had missed it. It was rescheduled for April 3, but at some point, there was a surprise hearing with a judge, and there Feng requested voluntary departure.
However, Homeland Security officials objected, arguing that he “was a criminal” and could not request voluntary departure, so his request was denied and a deportation order was issued, Brenner explained.
On Wednesday, March 18, Feng sent a message to Brenner saying they were taking him somewhere else, but he didn’t know if they were transferring him to another detention center or deporting him.
Petey Feng is now in Kaohsiung, a city 220 miles south of Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, where his parents live. He took this bus from Taipei to his city after he got deported from the United States.
Courtesy of Petey Feng
Brenner said she lost contact with him for an entire day, and it wasn’t until she received a message from Feng saying he was in Taipei that she learned he had been deported.
“He spent so much time in detention, and he just wanted to go home,” Brenner said. “I had a friend who offered to pay for his flight, so if they had allowed him to leave voluntarily, they wouldn’t have had to spend all that taxpayer money on detention and the flight.”
Feng had not been in his home country since 2006. Now he plans to build a life near his family.