Vietnamese refugees, threatened with deportation, file suit vs. ICE

Phi Nguyen, left, litigation director for Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta represents Vietnamese refugees.

VIETNAMESE REFUGEES have filed a nationwide class action lawsuit challenging their detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  

Since March 2017, ICE began picking up dozens of Vietnamese refugees and subjecting them to prolonged and indefinite detention in violation of federal law. Many of them were young children or teenagers when they came to the United States fleeing profound hardship and political persecution. Between 8,000 and 10,000 Vietnamese Americans are at risk of being similarly detained. 

The lawsuit was filed on Feb. 22 in Santa Ana, Calif. by civil rights organizations Asian Americans Advancing Justice–Atlanta (Advancing Justice-Atlanta), Asian Americans Advancing Justice–Los Angeles (Advancing Justice-LA),  and Asian Americans Advancing Justice–Asian Law Caucus (Advancing Justice-ALC), along with law firms Reed Smith LLP and Davis Adams, LLC. 

“The Vietnamese/Americans whom the U.S. government is trying to force back to Vietnam are the same refugees who fled war and crippling re-education camps to pursue the promise of peace and freedom. Unfortunately, the current U.S. administration’s actions against these Vietnamese refugees do not uphold that promise,” said Phi Nguyen, Litigation Director at Advancing Justice-Atlanta.

“By detaining refugees without due process, ICE is acting illegally and arbitrarily, a hallmark of authoritarian regimes similar to the one in Vietnam. The courts must step in to affirm the rule of law. That’s what this lawsuit seeks to do.” 

Under the Trump administration, ICE has moved to arrest and detain Vietnamese war refugees who are U.S. residents but are living under removal orders triggered by a criminal conviction.

ICE is unable to deport them because Vietnam, under a 2008 repatriation agreement with the United States, will not take back war refugees—defined as those who came to the United States to escape persecution before July 12, 1995, when the U.S.-Vietnam relationship started to normalize.

After Donald Trump signed an executive order in January 2017 sharply expanding immigration enforcement, ICE began to make widespread arrests of immigrants from Vietnam, as well as Cambodia, Somalia, Iraq and other countries that historically do not repatriate their U.S. emigrants, according to the complaint. (Similar national class actions have been filed on behalf of those other countries’ populations.)

However, in 2017, ICE officers began picking up previously released immigrants and holding them for prolonged periods of time, despite the inability of ICE to carry out their deportation. This prolonged detention of Vietnamese refugees violates federal law and breaks apart families without serving a legitimate purpose.  

“Indefinite detention of immigrants is both unlawful and inhumane,” said Anoop Prasad, Staff Attorney at Advancing Justice-ALC. “Each day causes untold harm to the people in detention and their families." 

Officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to comment on the potential class action.

The transition for Vietnamese refugees who resettled in the U.S. in the years following the Vietnam War was not easy. Due to ad hoc resettlement practices, they were often placed in resource-poor and economically deteriorating neighborhoods. Under the challenging conditions, some made mistakes leading to criminal convictions which made them targets for deportation. 

“This administration is recklessly disregarding our Constitution and laws as it continues its war on immigrants,” said Christopher Lapinig, Registered Legal Services Attorney at Advancing Justice-Los Angeles. “The actions taken by ICE only re-traumatize families from a community that already knows trauma all too well.”  

  

“Reed Smith LLP is honored to serve as pro bono counsel alongside Asian American Advancing Justice and its affiliates to protect the constitutional due process rights of the Vietnamese community residing in the United States,” said Tuan Uong, Senior Associate at Reed Smith. 

“Nearly all of those detained have U.S. citizen spouses, children, parents, or other relatives who rely on them for support. The United States is the only home they know,” said Uong.

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