Young Zheng’s first offense was flying into the United States illegally as a 14-year-old boy with phony papers supplied by Chinese
human smugglers known as snakeheads. But perhaps his biggest blunder, his lawyers say, was complying with immigration rules after he was apprehended and released, rather than fleeing and working to begin paying the $60,000 fee that his father in China had agreed to with the smugglers. Instead, he went to school and became a top student.