Chinese student to be deported from US over ‘disturbing’ behavior, buying high-powered guns
After talking with police, the 26-year-old former University of Central Florida student went out and purchased another rifle
A Chinese student at the University of Central Florida (UCF) is to be deported back to his home country after displaying behavior that police and his school found “disturbing.” That behavior? Buying guns.
Earlier this year, UCF reported to police that they were concerned about 26-year-old Sun Wenliang, describing a sudden, dramatic change in the student’s behavior and appearance that had been noticed by his friends and neighbors, including the “out of the blue” purchase of a Corvette worth $70,000 via text message.
According to a university statement, when police talked to Sun, he admitted to owning an assault-style rifle and ammunition, which he said that he kept in a storage facility due to his off-campus apartment’s no-guns policy.
After speaking with the police, Sun went out and purchased another high-powered rifle a short time later, outfitting this one with a bipod and scope. He also bought ammo for the rifle.
Both of these rifles were reportedly purchased legally by Sun. Under US law, non-immigrant visa holders are allowed to own firearms as long as they have a hunting license — which Sun did.
However, police were troubled by Sun’s high-powered rifle purchases and “distressing changes in behavior” — including changing his hair color — soon they were able to find an easy way out of the potentially dangerous situation.
During their investigation into Sun, officers discovered that Sun was not actually attending classes, meaning that he was in violation of the terms of his visa. With his non-immigrant visa holder status revoked, Sun was now breaking the law for owning the two firearms.
On February 7th, Sun was taken into custody by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. Last week, an immigration judge decided that he should be deported back to China. After being deported, Sun will not be allowed to return to the United States for at least 10 years.
“Again and again, we’re finding that ‘See Something, Say Something’ is more than just a campaign phrase. It’s a series of steps that are effective and save lives, and it worked in this case,” the UCF police department said on Facebook after the case was made public.
At around the same time that suspicions were being raised about Sun, another Chinese student, Zhao Yunsong, was being expelled from Virginia Tech and arrested by police for allegedly illegally owning an assault rifle.
However, the case against Zhao is quite a complicated one, even more so than the one against Sun. In early March, a local judge made the decision to allow Zhao to leave jail on bond, predicting that state prosecutors would have a difficult time convicting him in an eventual trial. But, only a few hours after leaving jail, Zhao was picked up by ICE agents and taken into their custody.
In yet another case, a Taiwanese exchange student was arrested this Wednesday for threatening to “shoot up” his Pennsylvania high school. While the 18-year-old student insisted that he was only joking around when he said that, local police found that he had researched how to buy weapons online. He has been charged with making terroristic threats.
Of course, Sun’s arrest came only a week before the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, located about 200 miles from the UCF campus in Orlando, where a 19-year-old former student named Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people and wounded 17 more with an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle in one of the worst school shootings in US history.
Cruz was able to legally purchase the AR-15, along with many other firearms, despite repeated reports of his behavior that anyone would call “disturbing.” If only he had dyed his hair.
