California governor pardons two Cambodian refugees

SEARAC

A demonstration in Sacramento preceded Gov. Gavin Newsom's pardons of two Cambodian Americans.

After weeks of lobbying by Asian American advocacy groups, California Gov. Gavin Newsom pardoned two Cambodian refugees facing deportation.

Kang Hen and Hay Hov received pardons from Newsom  Monday (May 13) preventing their immediate deportation by U.S. immigration authorities. 

“We are deeply grateful to Governor Newsom for recognizing the plight of refugees who are being targeted by the Trump administration and for acting with compassion and leadership to stop their deportations,” said Aarti Kohli, Executive Director of Advancing Justice – Asian Law Caucus.

Kang and Hay came to the United States as refugees with their families when they were children fleeing genocide under the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. 

Growing up in impoverished and hyper-criminalized neighborhoods, they made mistakes as youth and were swept into the criminal system. Under the Trump administration, becuse of their criminal records, they were eligible for deportation. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested them to deport them for decades-old crimes. 

Thousands of other Southeast Asian refugees who came to the United States as children also face deportation like Hay and Kang.

Gov. Jerry Brown, who preceded Newsom, pardoned five Cambodian refugees last year as the Trump administration ramped up its deportations of Asian immigrants, according to the governor’s office.

“The Cambodian refugee community is terrified,” said Kevin Lo, an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus.

Kang Hen fled genocide in Cambodia as a small child. Kang’s family was resettled as refugees in a violent neighborhood in San Jose. As a 12-year-old, Kang was pressured into joining a gang.

In 1994, shortly after his 18th birthday, Kang agreed to drive two friends away from a robbery they had just committed. He pleaded guilty to robbery and served time in prison. Since then, Kang has lived a law abiding life in San Francisco working at a seafood business for the past 13 years. Kang and his partner of 17 years, Ruth, have a 3-year-old child together. Recently, Ruth learned that she suffered from heart and kidney failure and may not survive. ICE arrested Kang on April 1 and planned to deport him next month.

Similarly, Hay also fled genocide in Cambodia as a small child and was resettled as a refugee in a violent neighborhood in East Oakland. As a child, Hay was beaten up, stabbed, and hit with a stray bullet. 

At the age of 19, Hay got into a verbal argument with an older man in his neighborhood. The feud between the two escalated as they exchanged verbal threats. The older man was shot in an unrelated argument and recovered. Hay was accused of escalating the feud and convicted of solicitation of murder. 

In the two decades since getting out of prison, Hay has stayed out of trouble and focused on caring for his family and working. On March 13, ICE agents arrested Hay and sought his deportation due to the conviction.

The governor's office says Newsom chose the two men because they have rehabilitated their lives since their convictions He also took into account that both their families would be harmed if Hen and Hov are deported, 

Hen is still in custody, but his lawyers hope Newsom’s pardon will mean he is spared from deportation, Lo said.

The campaign to #PardonRefugees was co-led by civil rights and community-based organizations, including Advancing Justice – Asian Law Caucus, Asian Prisoners Support Committee, Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, Empowering Marginalized Asian Communities, Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants, and Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity.

“California recognizes that it has made mistakes in the past leading to mass incarceration. For many immigrant youth, a criminal conviction carries consequences for the rest of their lives including deportation. We encourage Governor Newsom’s continued leadership in granting clemency to address mass incarceration and show that California will not be bullied by the Trump administration," said Anoop Prasad, Senior Staff Attorney with Advancing Justice – Asian Law Caucus."We hope to continue working with Governor Newsom on setting an example for the rest of the country,” said Prasad.

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Sunday Read: How this citizen stopped ICE from arrested 2 immigrants

The immigration rights activist who shut down an attempted arrest by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents says video of the incident shows how much of a role "knowing your rights" can play in determining how an encounter with ICE ends.

ICE agents have been carrying out Donald Trump's anti-immigrant and deportation policies with zeal usually striking fear in immigrants bringing their children to school, attending a hearing at courthouses or going to work. In one instance in New York, they picked on the wrong man.

Bryan MacCormack, 30, executive director of the Columbia County Sanctuary Movement in New York, told Newsweek he had been driving with two undocumented immigrants, whom he had accompanied to a courthouse to deal with minor traffic citations, when his vehicle was pulled over by ICE agents.

When approached by the agents, he told one of the immigrants to videotape the interaction.

In a video of the incident, which took place on March 5 in Hudson, New York, MacCormack, can be seen calling the ICE agent's attempt to frighten him into cooperation. 

When one of the ICE agents, presented what he called a "warrant of arrest."

Because he is involved in the sanctuary movement, McCormack knew his rights and called the agent's bluff. He pointed out the agent's warrant of arrest presented was an administrative warrant from the immigration agency, which does not require compliance, as opposed to a judicial warrant signed by a judge, which does.

In the video, MacCormack can be seen telling the ICE agent that the warrant of arrest he has is "not signed by a judge. It's not a judicial warrant. I have no obligation to oblige by that warrant." 



In a statement, the Columbia County Sanctuary Movement asserted that the officers "implicitly threatened" MacCormack "by asking if he knew section 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act pertaining to the harboring, transporting and smuggling of non-citizens."

In the video, the ICE agent speaking to the rights advocate eventually walks away, and MacCormack said he and the community members in his vehicle were able to safely exit the situation.

ICE spokesperson Khaalid Walls said in a statement to Newsweek that its agents had "specifically sought two unlawfully present foreign nationals" in the March 5 incident, but said "an individual [MacCormack] interfered with the enforcement action, causing officers to instead depart the scene to avoid further disruption."

Walls said ICE believes that "individuals who intervene in or seek to impede ICE officers while they are carrying out their mission recklessly endanger not only the enforcement personnel, but also the individuals targeted for arrest and potentially innocent bystanders."

"Those who engage in such actions expose themselves to potential criminal violations, and run the risk of harming the very people they purport to support," Walls said, adding: "Despite these attempts to obstruct ICE’s lawful efforts to apprehend criminal aliens and immigration violators, the agency remains committed to its efforts to uphold public safety."

MacCormack told Newsweek that he believes what the incident really shows is how undocumented immigrants knowing their rights can make "the difference between a community member being detained or deported or going home to their family. That's how serious knowing your rights is."

"It really is a Fourth Amendment issue," he said. "We all need to be upholding the Fourth Amendment and the Constitution to protect our rights and the rights of our community members."

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'Absolutely horrifying,' says Jayapal upon visiting immigrant detention centers

INSTAGRAM

Rep. Pramila Jayapal: criticizes Donald Trump immigration policies that separated children and parents.

CORRECTION: July 26, 9:30 a.m. to correct deadline date. 

VISITS by congressional delegations of detention centers in Texas and California confirmed the worst fears of the House members.

“I witnessed the full consequences of President Trump’s zero-humanity, zero-tolerance policy at the border and it was absolutely horrifying," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.

"In the courtrooms, we saw mass prosecutions of over 70 people at once. This assembly-line justice has no place in our democracy and must end immediately. And make no mistake – family separation is still occurring and young children are still being held in cages,” said Jayapal, who was born in India and raised in Indonesia and Singapore. She immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager in 1982,

The zero-tolerance policy towards asylum seekers instigated by the Trump administration that separated 2,500 children from their parents was shoved off the front pages last week because of the diplomatic snafus of Donald Trump.

It appears that the government will fail to meet the court-ordered deadline to reunite the children - including infants - with their parents continues to show that the government had no plan for reunification. Government employees and their private for-profit contractors are scrambling to meet the July 26 deadline issued by U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego.

The government concedes that the deadline will not be met for all the families. Only 1,012 families have been reunited as of this writing. 

The chaos surrounding this callous policy is evident and makes one wonder if there was any advance planning or any intention to reunited the families. More than half of the children will not be reunited with their parents or guardians. Over 460 parents have been deported without their children and 260 cases await further investigation. 

"Tthis visit was important to highlight the absolute lack of planning by this administration before they started separating and detaining children," said Rep. Judy Chu, who visited the California facility. "It’s clear that innocent children are being punished for the administration’s lack of planning". 

Jayapal and seven other members of Congress visited the Texas border Saturday. On their visit the members observed court proceedings of those who crossed the border, and visited the Ursula Border Patrol Processing Center, the Port Isabel Detention Center and the Brownsville Port of Entry.

“After visiting the U.S.-Mexico border, I am filled with sadness, despair, and anger that the Trump Administration has created a humanitarian crisis of this magnitude on American soil,” said Rep. Mark DeSaulnier D, CA. “This crisis, created by President Trump and Republican Leaders in Congress, is politically motivated and manufactured to divide Americans. If every American could witness what we experienced and hear the cries of sobbing mothers, fathers, and grandparents broken by what our government has done, people would understand firsthand the cruelty of this Administration’s policies.”

In California, another congressional delegation visited the David and Margaret Youth and Family Services Facility, an Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR)-funded facility in Los Angeles County, which houses immigrant children who have been separated from their parents.

The four Democrats included Congress members Judy Chu, Mark Takano, Grace Napolitano and Raul Ruiz. 

While the facilities were better than the centers in Texas, the delegation were still worried about the traumatic impact the separation may have caused with the family members.

According to the Los Angeles Times, at one Customs and Border Protection facility in El Centro, Calif., "families with children as young as 3 were sleeping on cold, concrete floors with no padding, according to the case filings. Detainees, including juveniles, were not given adequate access to drinking water and basic hygiene products."

SCREEN CAPTURE / MSNBC

REP. JUDY CHU

"This visit was important to highlight the absolute lack of planning by this administration before they started separating and detaining children," said Rep. Judy Chu, who visited the California facility. "It’s clear that innocent children are being punished for the administration’s lack of planning." 

For instance, she said, nobody knows why the children are being sent all over the country. Nor is there any assurance that they will meet the court ordered deadline to reunify these children with their families. In fact, it looks like reunification will be a long and difficult process. And it is clear that there is no plan at all to follow the Flores settlement, which prohibits the detention of children once these children are reunified. 

The inhumane treatment of the families crossing the U.S. border will go down in history as one of the shameful periods of America at a similar level as the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. The policy goes against the Christian values espoused by Trump and his supporters and goes against the values we share as Americans.

"This is government-sanctioned child abuse and it must stop now," said Jayapal. "Congress needs to act immediately and bring forward an immigration solution that’s reflective of who we are as a country. This crisis, which will go down as a stain on our nation’s history, is far from over.”

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TGIF Feature: Do you care? Step up! Speak out! Fight back!

TIME Photo-Illustration. Photographs by Getty Images

ARE YOU UPSET over Donald Trump's zero-tolerance policy that separated 2,300 kids from their parents who took their families across the southern border?

Even though he signed an executive order that supposedly stop the forced separations, the poliy is still in place. As federal agencies interpret it, it means that families will stay together in detention.

The Department of Justice attorneys are trying to overturn the Flores v. DOJ decision that limited children in detention for only 20 days. That court class action case allowed the parents to be released along withi the children.

Trump wants to keep the entire family together indefinitely until their case is adjudicated by an immigration court.

Melania Trump made a visit to one of the detention
 centers housing some of teh children taken from
their parents. Unfortunately, she wore this
coast, erasing any good will her visit may have
generated for the White House.

The question remains: After 20 days, will the children be taken away from the parents again?

Frustrated? Angry? Feeling helpless? Want to lash out?

There is hope. You are not alone. There are actions you can take.

Advocate: Call your member of Congress to support families staying together. 

• White House public comment line: 202-456-1111 
• Department of Justice public comment line: 202-353-1555 
• U.S. Senate Switchboard: 202-224-3121 

Giving: Financial support.

We recommend giving to the organizations below. These are nonprofits that our foundation has researched and vetted, including many that we have supported with our own grantmaking dollars.

Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) is a nonprofit organization that provides free and low-cost legal services to underserved immigrant children, families and refugees in Central and South Texas. They have been raising funds to get parents out of detention so that they can be reunited with their children.

Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) is a national organization that engages in policy advocacy. With offices in ten cities, including San Francisco and Washington D.C., KIND trains pro bono lawyers to represent unaccompanied immigrant children in removal proceedings.

ACLU Foundation is a national organization that has defended the civil rights of individuals for nearly a century. Its Immigrant Rights Project is a unit within the ACLU that defends the rights of immigrants and is currently litigating family separation issues.

Center for Gender and Refugee Studies (CGRS)* is a national organization that protects the fundamental human rights of refugee women, children, LGBT individuals, and others who flee persecution in their home countries. CGRS is taking the lead in responding to the administration’s attempts to dismantle asylum protections for victims of domestic violence.

Engage: Show your support on social media (#FamiliesBelongTogether #KeepFamiliesTogether).

Join: Since the 2016 election, we've learned that it's that marches, protests and rallies can be effective. Find a local Families Belong Together event here.

MoveOn, Women's March, Pantsuit Nation, National Domestic Workers Alliance and a number of other groups are also hosting a Families Belong Together protest on June 30 between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. at Lafayette Square in Washington D.C. The organizers are encouraging a day of nationwide protests to send the message to Donald Trump that "cruelly separating children from their families" won't be allowed to continue.

The official Facebook event can be found here; to find a local June 30 protest location, click here. 

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Trump policy of separating children and parents to stop but border arrests continue

DONALD TRUMP did what he said he couldn't do when he signed Wednesday afternoon (June 20) an executive order stopping the separation of children and parents after they cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump is trying to clean up the mess he made after months of separating children from their families and locking them up in detention camps, said the Asian Americans Advancing Justice in a press release. 

The legal advocacy civil rights organization says Trump may have caved in under political pressure  with this executive order, but Trump and his administration are still responsible for putting children in cages. 

“Trump’s new Executive Order does nothing to solve the inhumane treatment of families on the border. He still is putting children in jails," stated the Value Our  Families Coalition. "Trump is only covering up the mess he made because he came under political pressure. Families belong in communities, not cages. Trump must end the cruel mistreatment and disgrace in our country.”

READ: You can read the full executive order here.

Since the Trump administration launched their zero-tolerance policy which allowed the tearing children - infants to teens - from their parents, administration officials said they were only following the law (there is no law requiring the separation of children and parents) and only Congress could change the non-existent law.

Trump told the press that he didn't have the power to stop the policy.

Now, Trump’s executive order, titled “Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family Separation,”  doesn't end the administration's zero-tolerance policy. It simply says the family can remain together under detention as their immigration case is resolved. 

"The executive order offers no plan to reunite the thousands of children who remain separated from their parents," stated the ACLU. "The administration has signaled that it will now detain all families with children, regardless of whether they are asylum seekers, or pose a flight risk or a danger to the community. These children don’t belong in jail at all, under any set of circumstances."

The fate of the 2,300 children already under detention remains uncertain. Authorities don't have the means of reuniting the children - spread across the country - with their parents in detention centers.

U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, whose mother was an immigrant from India, tweeted: "Trump's executive order does not fix this crisis. It gives no solution for the thousands of children who have been torn away from their families and remain separated."

UPDATED: May 21, 12:45 p.m. to include ACLU statement.

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Infants and toddlers taken from their parents found; senators call for Nielsen's resignatoin

YESTERDAY, the question was asked: where are the babies and toddlers who have been separated from their parents as their families entered the United States.

They have been found. The Associated Press reported today (June 19) that those babies and other young children are being sent to three "tender age" shelters in South Texas. 

Medical personnel and attorneys who have visited these sites described rooms full of crying preschool-age children.

Children who have been separated from their parents or guardians can suffer irrevocable, long-term trauma even from a short-term separation from their parents, says Dr. Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

She recalls one girl crying hysterically on the mats in the middle of the room.

“The staff were by her, but they weren't allowed to hold her, comfort her,” Kraft says. “So she was just crying and wailing. Her little arms and legs were just pounding, and she was inconsolable. And we all knew why. We knew that she had been taken from her mother, and she wanted her mother.”

"What happens is that overall, this toxic stress really robs these children of the ability to love and to learn and to do well in school and to graduate from high school and to go on to college and to be successful," Kraft says. "And later on in life, it robs them of their capacity to be healthy grown adults."

Since the Trump admnistration launched its zero-tolerance policy against immigrant families coming over the U.S.-Mexico border in May, about 2,300 youngsters have been separated from their parents, most of whom have come to the U.S. to ask for asylum, a legal and internationally recognized process -- not to enter the country illegally.

Senators Mazie Hirono and Kamala Harris have asked for the resignation of  Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen for carrying out the policy.

"I called on Kirstjen Nielsen to resign as Secretary of Homeland Security for a lack of transparency and for implementing a policy of separating thousands of children from parents along our southern border," said Harris to the senator's supporters.

"Her numerous misleading statements, including denying yesterday that the government had a policy of separating children from their families at the border, are disqualifying.

"She has lost the trust of the American people and must resign -- and I am asking you to add your voice alongside mine in this fight." she said.

"These are not normal times, because we have a president who lies every single day and he expects the people around him -- he thrusts them forward as he did with Kirstjen Nielsen yesterday to lie for him," Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-HI, told reporters. 

"So, I have said that everything around him who have basically sold their souls to keep their jobs and lie for the President, I would welcome their resignations. She lied yesterday for the President."

The AP story reported that the doctors and lawyers who have visited the shelters said the facilities were fine, clean and safe, but the kids — who have no idea where their parents are — were hysterical, crying and acting out.

“The shelters aren’t the problem, it’s taking kids from their parents that’s the problem,” said South Texas pediatrician Marsha Griffin who has visited the shelters.

"Let me be clear: our government should be in the business of keeping families together, not tearing them apart," said Harris.

"And despite what this Administration is saying, there is no law forcing them to cruelly separate children from their families."

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