US deports 30 men back to Cambodia as part of Trump crackdown on refugees

ASAM NEWS

A coalition of Asian American groups denounced the deportation of more than 30 Cambodian Americans Monday.

The action by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement appears to be part of a crackdown by the Trump administration on refugees with criminal records. Many of those deported have served their time and proven to be outstanding contributing members of the community. Since 2017, the groups say deportations of Cambodian Americans have increased by 279%.

The deported men, whose ages ranged between the ages of 33 and 60, arrived in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh on Jan. 15, according to Bill Herod, the founder of the Khmer Vulnerability Aid Organization (KVAO), which works to integrate the deportees into Cambodia, a country some of them had never set foot in.

“The deportations of Cambodians and other Southeast Asian Americans devastate our communities. These refugees were pushed into the criminal justice system and served their time in prisons and detention centers,” said Montha Chum, national co-director of the Southeast Asian Freedom Network. “Deportation is cruel and triple punishment simply because they’re not citizens.”

Since 2017, there has been a 279% increase in deportations of Cambodian Americans, and deportations of Cambodian and Vietnamese Americans are the highest they have ever been in over a decade. Over 17,000 Southeast Asian Americans have been ordered removed, and over 1,900 have been deported since 1998.

According to Kham Moua of Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, all the individuals were deported on a single flight out of the Prairieland Detention Center in Texas. They came from all over the United States including Massachusetts, California and Washington state.

The deportations are occurring during the 45th anniversary of Southeast Asian Americans resettling in this country.

“Removals for Cambodians and all nationalities are directly proportionate to their respective illegal entries into the United States and represent the result of judicious immigration removal proceedings,” an ICE spokeswoman told AsAmNews.

Among the groups joining in the condemnation of ICE are Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Asian Prisoner Support Committee, Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, Southeast Asian Freedom Network, and Vietnamese Anti-Deportation Network.

They are supporting a bill by US House Reps. Chuy Garcia, Pramila Jayapal, Karen Bass, and Ayanna Pressley called the New Way Forward Act. The bill would allow reformed criminals to stay with their families in the United States.

” We cannot continue to give second chances to only US citizens and must apply that same standard to all residents in this country,” said Quyen Dinh, executive director of Southeast Asia Resource Action Center. “The United States cannot continue to tear our families apart by denying due process protections for refugees and immigrants. Congress must urgently move to advance bills like the New Way Forward Act to give our communities tools to fight their deportations.”

“Since our arrival to the United States, Cambodian people have fallen subject to poverty, incarceration, ICE detention and deportation, said Nathanial Tan, co-director of Asian Prisoner Support Committee. "Despite these deportations, we must continue to support and fight for folks. Deportations are not the end of the battle. We must continue to fight deportations and continuously find ways to reunite refugee families.”

Expect massive ICE raids after July 4th, says Trump; deportations of Cambodians already started

USCIS

Thousands of immigrants became Americans citizens this July 4th. This naturalization ceremony took place Southport, North Carolina.

This July 4th, as the United States celebrates it's Independence Day, and as thousands of new American citizens are sworn in on aircraft carriers, auditoriums, in courtrooms,museums, gyms and sporting events around the country, the Trump administration is readying a massive effort to deport thousands of other immigrants, refugees and visitors.

Donald Trump, stung by his quest to include a citizenship question on the Census form and the increasing pressure to improve conditions at detention centers near the Mexican border, swore that there will be a hike in ICE raids to deport "millions" of people after the July 4th holiday.

“We will be removing large numbers of people… starting sometime after July 4,” Trump said, having earlier noted that the deportations would begin “unless we do something pretty miraculous.”

U.S.  Immigration authorities, under orders from Trump, had earlier announced plans to launch a sweeping effort to deport recently arrived undocumented families.

“Even among the legal Asian immigrant population, anxiety levels are going up,” Karthick Ramakrishnan, chair of California’s Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs (APIA), told Public Radio International last month. “You have policies that are targeting even legal permanent residents now.”

For many Asian American immigrants, the deportation drive has already begun.

Indeed, as to signal the insincerity of the administration's intentions, A planeload of Cambodian American deportees landed in Pnnom Penh, Cambodia's capitol, as the US began Independence Day festivities.

Thirty-eight Cambodian refugees were deported back to Cambodia on July 3. Most of them were brought to this country by their families who sought asylum in the United States decades ago, fleeing the Khmer Rouge or because they fought for the U.S. in the Vietnam War.

The Acting Director of ICE, Mark Morgan, said the agency would target for deportation families that have received a removal order from a US immigration court.

Morgan said ICE wanted to deport undocumented families who had recently arrived in the U.S. to discourage more Central Americans from arriving. 

Trump had tweeted, before the formal kickoff of his 2020 re-election campaign, that ICE would begin removing “the millions” of undocumented immigrants in the US. 

The Cambodian Americans were easy pickings for Homeland Security. Most of them had been in detention since March.

All but two off the deportees had long ago served time for criminal convictions in the United States. They are part of a crackdown by the Trump administration to curb immigration to the United States from mostly non-White nations.

“It’s very detrimental to the community. It perpetuates this cycle of displacement and this cycle of breaking up families that has been going on since the Vietnam War and the conflicts (in Southeast Asia) that had U.S. involvement throughout the 1960s and 70s,” Bunthay Cheam, a Cambodian refugee affiliated with the Khmer Anti-Deportation Advocacy Group, said to The News Tribune.

“The barriers to reopening a case after deportation are high,” Kevin Lo of the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco told the News Tribune.

1,900 Cambodians in the United States are facing the same fate. ICE says 1,400 have broken the law and have served their time. Many of the convictions were minor offenses, such as possession of small amounts of drugs, being part of a criminal gang as youngsters, or driving under the influence.

The number of deported Cambodian immigrants has increased 279 percent from 2017 to 2018.

Khmer veterans protest the deportation of fellow refugees.

According to Reuters, Trump sees his immigration crackdown as a cornerstone of his reelection bid.

Although the mainstream perception of people subject to deportation are from south of the border, the fastest growing group of undocumented immigrants come from Asian countries, according to the Pew Research Center.

More than tripling in 15 years, Asians make up for the fastest-growing undocumented group in the United States. Mexicans, in comparison, grew by only 21% in the same period.

To put that figure into perspective, undocumented Asians make 16% of all illegal aliens in the country. Additionally, this means one of every seven Asian immigrants is undocumented, according to AAPI Data.

The operation is expected to target up to 2,000 families facing deportation orders in as many as 10 U.S. cities, including Houston, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco and Los Angeles, according to a media report.

A spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) declined to comment, saying: “Due to law-enforcement sensitivities and the safety and security of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, the agency will not offer specific details related to enforcement operations before the conclusion of those actions.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the country’s top Democrat, responded, saying, “The president’s new threat of a mass deportation dragnet is an act of utter malice and bigotry, designed solely to inject fear in our communities.”

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