The stress built up on Choi. He grew paranoid and insecure. He constantly imagined that government agents were out to arrest him.

"I was isolated and 700 miles away from home. My family couldn't help me. I was very, very afraid," he said. "I just kept having panic attacks. I would freak out that someone would find out (about my immigration status). I think that's what started the nightmares."

Choi continued to have similar dreams at least once a week throughout fall. They'd become so recurrent that he was convinced they would become reality.

"I read stories online about immigrant families being detained or whatever, so I was like, I need to prepare to get the hell out of here," he said.

With that, Choi plotted his grand escape, to be triggered if anyone at Berea should learn of his status. He planned to escape, by foot, 120 miles from Berea, KY, over the state border to Cincinnati, OH.

"I went down to Walmart and bought a first-aid kit and a blanket," he described. "I printed Google maps. They're about this thick," his thumb and index finger measured a quarter-inch. "I couldn't walk on the Interstate (highway), so I wanted to know which back roads I could take to Cincinnati."

Choi's ready-to-go escape toolkit, that would let him flee the state between the moment when an acquaintance realized he was undocumented and moment when the authorities would actually show up at his door, included flashlights and extra batteries, a change of clothes, and water. He also packed $100 in emergency cash.

"I'd camp out in the wilderness. That's why I would have blankets. I would be sleeping out in the open," he said. "I mean, I was paranoid."

"At Cincinnati, I'll catch the train to New York," he figured, "and then from there back home to New Jersey," he said.

* * *

I met Choi five years later at his office at the MinKwon Center for Community Action in Flushing, Queens. He commutes two hours daily by bus and train to and from Little Ferry, New Jersey.

Once a predominantly white neighborhood, Flushing has undergone major demographic change since the 1970s, when first the Taiwanese, then the Koreans, and the mainland Chinese surged in.

Today, Flushing is one of the largest Asian enclaves in New York City. Shop signs and advertisement boards along Main Street, Flushing's central drag, are mostly printed in Chinese.

The people flooding the narrow sidewalks of Main Street are largely topped by black hair. They jostle for space among the merchants peddling goods like fruits and vegetables, Chinese herbs, two-dollar pirated DVDs, made-in-China phone accessories, and leather shoes that spill out onto the sidewalks. The conversations overheard are usually conducted in Mandarin or the Wenzhou and Fuzhou dialects. Many residents, especially older ones, don't speak English. The air, someone told me, smells like China, the sour, fishy odor of wet food, markets, garbage and grease blended together.