A wealthy Dallas developer and ex-city official who dumped his wife of 30 years to marry a Chinese masseuse has come to New York to fight to keep her in the United States.
Immigration officials ordered Ralph Isenberg’s wife, Nicole, 40, to fly back to China by Monday.
Instead, the couple came to the Big Apple, where they hired a lawyer who plans to sue the feds.
“This is the city that my parents came to when they fled Nazi Germany in World War II,” said Isenberg, 53, who resigned from the Dallas City Plan Commission after revealing his steamy affair with Nicole.
“Three-fourths of my family perished in Nazi Germany,” he added. “I never imagined in my wildest dreams that I would have to fight to keep my family together on U.S. soil.”
The juicy story began unfolding early this month when Isenberg quit the commission upon disclosing he left his wife of 30 years after meeting Nicole three years ago.
The couple were married March 13, 2004, and Isenberg, who has two grown daughters, adopted Nicole’s 14-year- old daughter from a previous marriage.
Nicole, who has an engineering degree, came to the United States in 1999 on a business visa.
Speaking no English, she worked as a waitress and as a masseuse in a Dallas bathhouse.
In 2001, she was arrested on a prostitution charge and served 52 days for immigration violations. She was ordered deported when she missed an immigration hearing.
The Isenbergs insist the prostitution charge was unfounded and she missed the hearing because she wasn’t notified of it.
“I just feel very, very angry,” said Nicole, who gave birth to a daughter six weeks ago. “The way the government has treated us is not fair. We’re just fighting to keep our family together.”
Their attorney, Theodore Cox, plans to file a federal suit this week, accusing the government of obstructing Nicole’s constitutional rights.
Each side accuses the other of egregious behavior.
Isenberg said immigration officials targeted his wife because he gave a Dallas TV station information about poor conditions at the lockup where Nicole was held.
“This is retribution,” he charged. “They’re out to get me through my wife. They want to make a family suffer for their mistakes.”
Paul Hunker, chief counsel for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Dallas, told the Dallas Morning News that Nicole is one of the worst violators of immigration law he has seen.
ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok said the feds gave Nicole three extensions over 18 months to stay in the United States.