An undocumented Chinese restaurant worker claims he was wrongly detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement while giving a deposition in a lawsuit.

Xue Hui Zhang lives in Brooklyn and was previously a cook at an Albany restaurant, Ichiban, from 2008 to 2015, according to his attorneys. The restaurant is no longer in business. Zhang claims he's owed $200,000 in back wages and is suing the former employer in federal court in Albany for violating the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Last Monday, attorney Adam Dong said he was accompanying Zhang as he gave his deposition at the office of the defense counsel near Albany. The arrest happened when they broke for lunch. 

"We got out of the car and we walked toward the diner entrance," Dong recalled. There, he said, five or six ICE agents "stopped us and said, 'Mr. Zhang can you come with us?'"

He said he asked the ICE agents why Mr. Zhang was stopped and was told they had an outstanding warrant. He's now being held at a detention center in Buffalo.

Dong said Zhang believes his former employer notified ICE about his whereabouts. "It is not difficult to infer ICE was there because someone tipped them off, they were waiting for Mr. Zhang to come out to arrest him."

But the attorney for Ichiban denies any tip-off. "I have no first hand knowledge of the facts of Mr. Zhang’s arrest," said Matthew J. Mann, who added that he even asked the first jail Zhang was taken to if he could continue the deposition there. "My clients have assured me that they did not call ICE."

Zhang's attorneys said the case is extremely unusual. While ICE has arrested people coming and going from courts, it has a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Department of Labor not to detain workers in the process of suing an employer over workplace violations.

"The underlying rationale or reason for the two agencies having this MOU is to ensure that undocumented employees can pursue their labor law rights without the fear of interference from ICE," said attorney John Troy, whose Queens law firm is also representing Zhang. "The goal of this MOU is to prevent what happened in this case, which is employer retaliation, and ICE being the assistant to the retaliation."

He said he'll seek to free Zhang from detention based on this argument.

ICE said Zhang was arrested in a parking lot last Monday because an immigration judge ordered his removal in 2003. A spokesman said, "Prior to his arrest, ICE made numerous attempts to coordinate Mr. Zhang’s removal. He is presently in ICE custody pending his removal from the United States."

As for the memorandum of understanding, Walls said, "Nothing in this MOU or its implementation is intended to restrict the legal authority of ICE" or the Department of Labor, adding. "ICE did nothing in violation of this memo."