Undocumented Cambodian man is freed from ICE custody and given green card
By San Francisco Chronicle - May 12, 2019

For the first time in nearly 20 years, Hay Hov has a green card.

Hov, a Cambodian refugee from Oakland who was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in March, has been freed from a facility in Bakersfield and is no longer at risk of deportation, his attorney said.

The Chronicle highlighted his story days before he and dozens of others across the U.S. were detained by ICE, amid an uptick in the arrests of Cambodians who committed crimes long ago and subsequently lost their green cards.

In full: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/art ... 836765.php

Two immigrants facing deportation among Gavin Newsom’s first pardons
13 May 2019
Two Cambodian refugees facing deportation are among the first people Gov. Gavin Newsom is pardoning, his office announced Monday.

Kang Hen and Hay Hov were both brought to the U.S. lawfully as children fleeing genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge regime and were later convicted of gang-related crimes when they were young men.

Both men were threatened with deportation earlier this year. The pardons could help them argue in court that they should not be sent back to Cambodia.

Newsom’s predecessor Jerry Brown 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.

Lo and others at the nonprofit, which represents both men, are anticipating there will be a flight later this summer — likely in June or July — deporting a group of people back to Cambodia. Now that they’ve been pardoned, Lo said he doesn’t believe Hen and Hov will be among that group.

“The governor’s pardon came at a good time,” he said.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-go ... 57659.html

While it is true that some of the Cambodian deportees were imprisoned for serious crimes in the US before being deported, many of them were busted for minor offenses committed years ago, and some were released into US society more than 20 years ago. Strangely enough, these people were not considered to be a danger to society at the time of their release from prison. However now, years later, they are being arrested and deported to Cambodia because "ICE said these deportations take criminals off our streets and made our communities safer. "

Fear grips immigrants who fled here to escape genocide – ‘They’re going to try to deport me’
By Matt Driscoll
May 16, 2019 02:37 PM, Updated May 17, 2019 10:53 AM
Thuoy Phok expected his meeting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be brief — so brief that he hadn’t eaten breakfast. A plumber from Tacoma, Phok planned on returning to work later that day.

“I thought maybe it was good news,” Phok, 43, recalls of the Sept. 10, 2018, meeting in Tukwila, taking off his baseball cap and running a calloused hand over his balding head.

Phok, a Cambodian refugee whose family escaped genocide and arrived in the United States in 1980, had received a notice summoning him a few weeks earlier. He said the letter told him only that federal immigration officials — who he’d been checking in with regularly over the last 18 years — wanted to see him.

The meeting, it soon became clear, would be a one-sided affair. For Phok, the results would be life-changing.

It was brief, lasting 10 to 15 minutes. When it was over, Phok said he was taken to a holding cell. He’d remain detained in various immigration facilities, he told The News Tribune, for the next three months.

Phok said he learned federal immigration officials wanted to deport him to Cambodia, a country he’s never seen, because of a crime he committed more than two decades ago. The 1997 conviction resulted in an active immigration removal order against him.

The Crime Causing the Deportation
Court records indicate that in 1997, two days before his 22nd birthday, Tacoma police found Phok in possession of a firearm. A juvenile second-degree robbery conviction barred him from owning a gun.

Phok said he was driving with a carload of friends when the car was pulled over near Cheney Stadium for running a red light. The gun, he maintained, wasn’t his. But no one in the car spoke up, and he was charged, he said.

Phok eventually pleaded guilty to a single charge of first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm and was sentenced to just under two years. He said most of his time in prison was spent in Walla Walla. Since being released, there are no other known felony convictions on his record, according to a search by The News Tribune.

https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/loc ... 66884.html

Deportation flight another sad chapter in lives of Cambodian refugees who fled to America
By Matt Driscoll
July 02, 2019 05:15 PM, Updated 6 hours 19 minutes ago

Sophy Hem was months old when his family came to America fleeing the Cambodian genocide. At 17, he served time in prison for a non-fatal shooting. More than 20 years after being released, he feared being deported back to Cambodia for his crime. By Joshua Bessex

The flight took off Monday night from Dallas, according to immigration attorneys and advocates who tracked it.

Its ultimate destination: Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.

On it, according to the attorneys and advocates, roughly 40 people forced from the country they called home. Most had been in the United States since they were very young children, having fled genocide and civil war in Cambodia, a country they’ve never really known.

For the most part, they’d been detained since March, waiting to see what an uncertain future held.
Now, many will never see the United States again.

“The barriers to reopening a case after deportation are high,” said Kevin Lo, a staff attorney with the California-based Asian Law Caucus, which has represented a number of Cambodians facing deportation in recent years.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement would not confirm Monday’s flight, citing possible security risks.

Read more here: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/loc ... rylink=cpy

According to Reuters news agency, the number of US deportees to Cambodia is confirmed as 37 in Phnom Penh today on their arrival from the US. Previously, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said they would not confirm or deny the deportation, or give the number of deportees to Cambodia this week.

July 4, 2019 / 12:31 PM / Updated 2 hours ago
U.S. deports 37 Cambodian refugees after criminal convictions
Prak Chan Thul
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Thirty-seven Cambodian deported by the United States arrived in Phnom Penh on Thursday, 32 of them refugees who fled during the rule of the genocidal Khmer Rouge in the 1970s or war that followed their ouster, an aid group said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKCN1TZ0WF

Deported to Their Parents’ Homeland, Cambodian Americans Start Anew
Refugees who fled the Khmer Rouge as children are being deported from the United States in record numbers—and are adapting as adults to life in a country most have never known.
By Jonathan W. Rosen | August 14, 2019, 6:00 AM

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia—It wasn’t until Sam Nak was in handcuffs and leg irons, 35,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean, that reality finally sunk in: He might never get to go home.

Nak grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, where his family had been resettled as refugees when he was 6 months old. His parents had fled Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s. Nak, now 41, was born in a refugee camp in Thailand. While he was eligible after five years in the country, he never became a U.S. citizen: His family didn’t understand the process. Nak never gave the distinction much thought until he started having run-ins with the law. In 1999, after pleading guilty to selling marijuana to avoid prison time, Nak was given a deportation order. (U.S. immigration law states that noncitizens convicted of a wide range of crimes can be sent back to their native countries.) But Nak had no documents proving Cambodian citizenship, so he stayed in the United States for another 19 years.

In 2018, Nak was picked up on another drug charge and later transferred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during a national raid on the Cambodian American community. ICE shuffled him between immigrant detention facilities for three months and put him on a flight to Cambodia that August. “They sent me on a plane to a place I’d never been,” Nak said. He didn’t even get to pack a suitcase.

As asylum-seekers face pushback at the U.S.-Mexico border, the case of Cambodian Americans like Nak is a reminder that the United States has also turned its back on those it once offered refuge.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/14/de ... tart-anew/

It's not all bad news all the time. Far more Cambodians have made a very successful living abroad. Be nice if the media reported on this more often instead of concentrating on the bad.
https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50645296/c ... eur-award/

Cooldude wrote: ↑Mon Sep 23, 2019 11:36 pm It's not all bad news all the time. Far more Cambodians have made a very successful living abroad. Be nice if the media reported on this more often instead of concentrating on the bad.
https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50645296/c ... eur-award/

Good news is a hard sell.
Some success stories here:
getting-your-fill/cambodia-cuisine-conn ... 22763.html

Asian American groups oppose Cambodian refugee deportations
By PHILIP MARCELOSeptember 28, 2019

LOWELL, Mass. (AP) — Asian American groups are objecting to the Trump administration’s efforts to step up deportations of Cambodians, as dozens of refugees with criminal convictions are being ordered to report to federal officials next week for removal.

At least 20 people in California have been served notices to report to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to begin the deportation process, according to Ny Nourn, a San Francisco-based community advocate with the Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus. The state is home to the largest population of Cambodians in the U.S.

In Massachusetts, the state with the nation’s second largest Cambodian community, at least 10 residents have received them, said Bethany Li, director of Greater Boston Legal Services’ Asian Outreach Unit.

Cambodians living in Minnesota, Texas, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin have also been issued the orders, said Elaine Sanchez Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center in Washington, D.C.
https://www.apnews.com/b8d4366b60974cf0ac0f278f7b0b53a0

Burlington Protest Against ICE Detentions Of Cambodian Americans
Organizers said ICE plans to detain 'at least 10 Cambodian American residents from Lowell, Lynn and Worcester.'
By Christopher Huffaker, Patch Staff
Oct 3, 2019 4:29 pm ET
BURLINGTON, MA — Protesters gathered outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Burlington, Wednesday morning, to protest planned detentions of Cambodian immigrants. According to ICE, deportations of Cambodian citizens increased by 279% from 2017 to 2018, with 110 deported in 2018. The protest was organized by the Asian American Resource Workshop and Greater Boston Legal Services.

The protest coincided with other protests in Sacramento, San Francisco, Tacoma and Warwick. Lowell has the second-highest Cambodian American population in the country.

WBUR reporter Shannon Dooling reported on Twitter that among six people who reported to the ICE office today, two were detained, while four were released, including Lynn resident Saray Im.
Im, the subject of a change.org petition, fled Cambodia to escape the Khmer Rouge genocide as a child, and committed a firearm crime when he was 21 for which he spent 3 years incarcerated and 2 years in ICE detention. Im is now married with children and has spent the last two decades living and working in Lynn, which also has a high immigrant population.
https://patch.com/massachusetts/burling ... -americans