Latest on the US-Cambodian deportees issue

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Re: Latest on the US-Cambodian deportees issue

Post by Brody »

John Bingham wrote: Sat Feb 01, 2020 12:59 pm
pczz wrote: Sat Feb 01, 2020 4:07 am If that is correct then why dont all the khmer currently in the USa apply for citizenship before they become gang bangers? Am i missing something?
Spyder: Yo Dawg - we're out of cash. Let's go and rob that corner store?
Lil C : Nah man, let's wait, I've got my citizenship exam next week. 8-)
Hence why there is no need to rip open your bleeding hearts and get all verklempt over these deported thugs, when they get shipped off over here, get interviewed and turn on the water-works with their 'tale-of-woe'.

Fuck'em, I say. We need better English speaking tuk-tuk drivers here anyway. Win-win :thumb:
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Re: Latest on the US-Cambodian deportees issue

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Khmer-American Thy Chea returns home to his family in the US today after 18 months in Cambodia. From social media:

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On Wednesday, February 26th, Thy Chea will return home to Massachusetts and be reunited with his family and community! Join us at 5:00pm at Boston Logan Airport to welcome Thy home! Thy is the first Cambodian American to have returned on the East Coast, and the fourth person nationwide.

Thy was unjustly deported to Cambodia in August 2018, and separated from his family for the past 18 months. On the day of his deportation, he was granted an emergency motion to stay in the US, but the deportation flight had already taken off. After many efforts to fight against the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) attempts to keep Thy in Cambodia, he has won, and will be returning home to rejoin his community and family in Massachusetts.

In addition to welcoming Thy home, we are raising money to support Thy with his resettlement back to the US. To support Thy and his family, please donate and share the fundraising campaign: https://www.gofundme.com/f/welcome-thy-home

Please join us in supporting Thy and his family by welcoming him home at the airport, and helping him resettle back to the US after his deportation.

It is moments like these that give us and the community hope in the fight to end Southeast Asian deportations. This is a huge win for the community and his family. We are excited to be welcoming Thy back home, and will continue to fight for an end to all deportations!

#Right2Return #Right2Reunite #WelcomeHomeThy #EndSEADeportations
For more information about Southeast Asian deportation, and/or for Thy's return, please contact AARW's Organizing Director, Kevin Lam at [email protected].

More on this specific case: https://patch.com/massachusetts/tewksbu ... return-u-s
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Returning Cambodia Refugee Spotlights Trump’s Growing Southeast Asia Deportations
Thy Chea was the fourth such refugee to be allowed back into the country since the administration stepped up deportations of Southeast Asians.
By Philip Marcelo
February 27, 2020
A Cambodian refugee who says he was wrongly deported nearly two years ago was reunited with his family in Massachusetts on Wednesday, becoming the fourth such refugee — and first on the East Coast — to be allowed back into the country since the Trump administration stepped up deportations of Southeast Asians.

Thy Chea arrived at Boston’s Logan Airport after successfully petitioning to get his green card reinstated and suing the federal government to allow him to return to the country.

The 50-year-old Lowell resident was welcomed by his family and supporters, who cheered, held signs and handed him flower bouquets as they greeted him at the baggage claim.

Chea quickly scooped up his young daughter and one-year-old son, who was born after he was deported and had never met him in person.

“I am so grateful to be with my family. It’s been 18 months,” he said tearfully. “This is my kid and it’s the first time I’m holding him and meeting him.”

Chea joins three other Cambodian Americans, all residents of California, who have returned after being deported. The most recent was Sok Loeun, who landed at San Francisco’s airport this month after living in Cambodia for five years.

Wednesday’s reunion in Boston also comes as Cambodian communities are bracing for their seventh round of deportation raids in the next two weeks and Laotian communities are anticipating increased deportations this year, said Kevin Lam, of the Asian American Resource Workshop, a local advocacy group.
https://thediplomat.com/2020/02/returni ... ortations/
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Re: Latest on the US-Cambodian deportees issue

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For anyone interested, this is a short movie on the plight of Cambodian deportees in the US.

Removal
By Alan Ng | May 14, 2020

The immigration debate seems only to affect…well, immigrants. Immigration and deportation woes extend to the Khmer community in KrewKeth’s short film, Removal.

A mother visits a priest at her Buddhist shrine to plead to the “priest” on behalf of her son. He is a family man living in the United States with his wife and children. He faces deportation back to Cambodia. To complicate things further, while in America, her son hung out with the wrong crowd in his youth, and his trouble with the law is the reason his residency is being revoked.

“He faces deportation back to Cambodia.”

Amid this harrowing situation, the Buddhist priest offers advice about the role of a parent in these times. Removal juxtaposes the priest’s Buddhist wisdom alongside the son’s life-altering moment he’ll face at the Immigration office.

Removal tells an overall lesson in Kharma, if you will, as it concerns U.S. immigration policy. It makes no overt judgment, but the film intends to build our sympathies to all immigrants seeking a new life in America. Its message is insightful and goes right to the point with its 10-minute runtime.

Removal screened as part of the Khmer Americana Showcase at the 2020 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival Virtual Showcase.
https://filmthreat.com/reviews/removal/
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Re: Latest on the US-Cambodian deportees issue

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California governor pardons 13, commutes 21 sentences
By The Associated Press |
PUBLISHED: June 28, 2020 at 9:44 a.m. | UPDATED: June 28, 2020 at 9:29 p.m.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom has pardoned 13 former prisoners, including three whose immigration status may benefit from the decision. He also commuted the sentences of 21 current inmates, including several who killed their victims and had been serving life-without-parole sentences.

Sophea Om, 37, was deported to Cambodia in 2011, where she now is a teacher. She sought the pardon to aid her bid to return to the United States, where her 16-year-old U.S. citizen son still lives. She was sentenced to two years in prison in 2006 after pleading guilty in Los Angeles County to acquiring an access card, according to the governor’s office.

Ny Nourn, 39, of San Francisco is attempting to avoid deportation to Cambodia.

She was convicted of second-degree murder in San Diego County in 2003. Newsom’s office said she was 18 when she helped lure her victim to his death at the direction of her 38-year-old abusive boyfriend, who shot him.

Both women were born in refugee camps in Thailand and legally entered the United States with their families, his office said, Om when she was 18 months old and Nourn when she was 5.

Chheng “Michael” Lao lawfully entered the U.S. when he was 5, and also is seeking to avoid deportation to Cambodia. He was 21 in 1995 when he was convicted of residential burglary in Los Angeles County. He is now married with two children.

Newsom’s office called the deportations “an unjust collateral consequence that would harm their families and communities.”
https://www.dailybreeze.com/2020/06/28/ ... sentences/
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Re: Latest on the US-Cambodian deportees issue

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CEOCambodiaNews wrote: Sun Mar 01, 2020 7:07 am Returning Cambodia Refugee Spotlights Trump’s Growing Southeast Asia Deportations
Thy Chea was the fourth such refugee to be allowed back into the country since the administration stepped up deportations of Southeast Asians.
By Philip Marcelo
February 27, 2020
A Cambodian refugee who says he was wrongly deported nearly two years ago was reunited with his family in Massachusetts on Wednesday, becoming the fourth such refugee — and first on the East Coast — to be allowed back into the country since the Trump administration stepped up deportations of Southeast Asians.

Thy Chea arrived at Boston’s Logan Airport after successfully petitioning to get his green card reinstated and suing the federal government to allow him to return to the country.

The 50-year-old Lowell resident was welcomed by his family and supporters, who cheered, held signs and handed him flower bouquets as they greeted him at the baggage claim.

Chea quickly scooped up his young daughter and one-year-old son, who was born after he was deported and had never met him in person.

“I am so grateful to be with my family. It’s been 18 months,” he said tearfully. “This is my kid and it’s the first time I’m holding him and meeting him.”

Chea joins three other Cambodian Americans, all residents of California, who have returned after being deported. The most recent was Sok Loeun, who landed at San Francisco’s airport this month after living in Cambodia for five years.

Wednesday’s reunion in Boston also comes as Cambodian communities are bracing for their seventh round of deportation raids in the next two weeks and Laotian communities are anticipating increased deportations this year, said Kevin Lam, of the Asian American Resource Workshop, a local advocacy group.
https://thediplomat.com/2020/02/returni ... ortations/
It was Obama that stepped up the deportations.
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Re: Latest on the US-Cambodian deportees issue

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Advocates fear San Quentin inmate, a Cambodian refugee, will be transferred to ICE
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Lauren Hernández Jun 30, 2020

A Cambodian refugee is set to be released from San Quentin State Prison on Wednesday and could be handed to immigration authorities, who could deport him, and immigration advocates are calling on the governor to intervene and help the man, who they say has COVID-19 symptoms.

Chanthon Bun, who was born at a Cambodian refugee camp in 1979 after his family fled the Khmer Rouge, a regime that killed more than 1 million people in Cambodia, served time for second-degree robbery and use of a firearm, said Anoop Prasad, a staff attorney with the Asian Law Caucus who is representing Bun, now 41.

Bun was 18 when he was convicted in 1998, and, Prasad said, had “joined a group of older men who took part in an armed robbery” in which no one was injured. Advocates with the Asian Prisoner Support Committee said his sentence was the result of the “tough on crime era which resulted in the dramatic growth of the incarceration of people of color.”

Prasad and advocates with the Law Caucus and the Asian Prisoner Support Committee — which facilitates a program at San Quentin State Prison that Bun has been a participant and leader in for several years — said that Bun has a blood disorder, muscle disorder and hypertension that puts him at risk of getting seriously ill or dying if he is transferred to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. Advocates told The Chronicle that their concerns are heightened because Bun reported in recent days that he is experiencing symptoms of the coronavirus, such as loss of taste and smell.

“In the best of times, not even in a pandemic, medical care in ICE is so substandard. This is such a rare blood disorder, there are serious doubts about whether or not ICE would be able to treat it,” Prasad said. “The drugs used to treat (Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura) outbreaks are immunosuppressants, so the combination of having COVID or being exposed to COVID while you’re immune system is already suppressed at baseline, and then taking drugs to suppress it even further, is extremely dangerous.”

Bun is a permanent resident, but Prasad said ICE placed a detainer on him when he was convicted so that at the time of his release, immigration officials could transfer him to an ICE facility, from where he he would likely be deported to Cambodia — a country he has not stepped foot in since he was a child.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/art ... 378594.php
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The first Cambodian deportee to return to the U.S. just became a citizen in Sacramento
By Ashley Wong
July 03, 2020 05:00 AM , Updated July 03, 2020 02:29 PM

The first Cambodian American deportee to return home just became a United States citizen.

The oath ceremony was nothing like what Phorn Tem imagined it would be like. There were no chairs and everyone stood 6 feet apart with masks on their face.

They also weren’t allowed to have guests, so Tem went into the ceremony without his family or friends to witness.

“When I raised my right hand (at the oath ceremony), I said to myself, ‘Damn, this couldn’t be real,’” Tem said. “I thought I was dreaming at first.”

When Tem, 35, was pulled over by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on his way to a gym in October 2017 and was later deported, he thought he would be stuck for the rest of his life in Cambodia, a country he had never visited.

But in November 2018, Tem flew home to family and friends in Sacramento, and on June 24, he became a U.S. citizen.

It’s an unprecedented case, according to Melanie Kim, a staff attorney with Asian Americans Advancing Justice’s Asian Law Caucus and one of the attorneys involved in Tem’s case. No one who had been deported from the U.S. to Cambodia had returned.
Read more here: https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/artic ... rylink=cpy
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Re: Latest on the US-Cambodian deportees issue

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Gov. Newsom urged to pardon former Cambodian refugee at risk of being deported after prison sentence
Ryan General
1 day ago
Image
-Phoeun You, whose family fled the Cambodian genocide, is now at risk of being deported back to the country after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained him immediately after he was released from prison in January.
-You had been deemed safe for early release by the San Quentin Prison parole board after serving a 25-year prison sentence.
-You, who joined a gang in his teens, shot and killed a 17-year-old at age 20 while retaliating against a gang attack on a young member of his family.
-While in prison, You earned his associate of arts degree from Patten University and went on to become a journalist for the San Quentin News as well as a counselor and mentor to other inmates.
-He also helped found the self-help program ROOTS (Restoring Our Original True Selves) with his peers.
-The Asian Prisoner Support Committee and other advocates have since urged California Gov. Gavin Newsom to grant him a pardon and effectively stop his impending deportation.


A former child refugee from Cambodia who served 25 years in prison is now at risk of being deported back to a country he is barely familiar with.

Despite being deemed safe for early release by the San Quentin Prison parole board, 47-year-old Phoeun You was handed over to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in January after being pardoned.

Activists argue that You, whose family fled the Cambodian genocide, no longer poses a threat to society based on the parole board’s decision.

The Asian Prisoner Support Committee and other advocates have since urged California Gov. Gavin Newsom to grant him a pardon and effectively stop his impending deportation.

While You has acknowledged the seriousness of the crime he committed as a young man, he said he has changed and is now ready to be with his family and give back to the community after decades of serving his sentence.
Full article: https://nextshark.com/newsom-cambodian- ... on-prison/
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Re: Latest on the US-Cambodian deportees issue

Post by Darkcel »

That California DOC dental plan almost makes me want to commit a crime...

Dudes American as American comes, practically grew up in prison starting at age 20. Keep him in the states, there's nothing here for him and hopefully the governor will see that.
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