Hoang Trinh was four years old when he arrived from Vietnam, part of a large Catholic family that fled a war-torn homeland to build a new life together in Garden Grove.
But now the United States government wants him to return to Vietnam — despite a 10-year-old agreement between the two countries that dictates who Vietnam will and won’t accept back.
The detentions of Vietnamese refugees and other Asian immigrants may easily get lost in the immigration debate, which typically centers on Latinos. But civil rights advocates brought it front and center on Wednesday when they announced a class action lawsuit challenging what they allege are unlawful detentions by the Trump administration.
“This administration is an equal opportunity abuser of immigrants. It’s important to highlight that this issue certainly is impacting Asian American communities… They are just as vulnerable” as Latino immigrants, said Laboni Hoq, litigation director with Los Angeles office of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, a nonprofit that advocates for Asian American civil rights.
Specifically, the group says the Trump administration has targeted a handful of Vietnamese refugees who have been in the United States since prior to 1995, and holding them in detention indefinitely for deportation.
The lawsuit cites Trinh and three other petitioners among approximately 40 Vietnamese refugees awaiting deportation while housed in immigration detention facilities. Some have been detained over 90 days; some as long as 11 months. And that is illegal, their attorneys say, because the U.S. government doesn’t have the right to hold people indefinitely unless there’s an expectation that their country of origin will take them back.
In the case of Vietnam, that country doesn’t just take anyone back. And, traditionally, it hasn’t.
There is a 2008 agreement that sets the provisions, conditions and procedures under which a Vietnamese citizen living in the United States can be repatriated. The Vietnamese government considers requests on a case-by-case basis. But if the refugees left Vietnam for the United States before July 12, 1995, the date when diplomatic relations were re-established between the two countries, they may not be deported back to their home country.
Yet, that’s exactly what started happening last year, attorneys said.
“Today, the American government – the one that my mom equates with freedom and justice – is illegally and indefinitely incarcerating Vietnamese refugees who came to the United States before July 12, 1995 and who therefore cannot be removed under a longstanding agreement between Vietnam and the United States,” said Phi Nguyen, litigation director with the Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Atlanta affiliate. Her family also are Vietnamese refugees, though none are represented in the suit.
Officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to comment on the potential class action.
According to data available through U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 71 individuals were deported to Vietnam last year – compared to 35 the previous year. An ICE spokesman said the agency does not break down deportation cases by the year in which the refugees arrived in the United States.
Attorneys with Asian Americans Advancing Justice said there are at least half a dozen cases of Vietnamese refugees who arrived prior to 1995 who have been deported since last year. But the trend, if this becomes a new policy, could affect as many as 8,000 to 10,000 Vietnamese with final orders of removal from this country, attorneys said.
That includes people like Tung Nguyen. He arrived from Vietnam as a teenager in 1991. The way he described it Wednesday, he did “stupid” things when he was young. At 16, he was involved in a fatal stabbing and was tried and convicted as an adult. He was sentenced to 25 years to life. But after serving 18 years in prison — after he risked his life to protect civilians during a prison brawl — he was released on parole by Gov. Jerry Brown.
Since then, he said, “I have dedicated my life to service in the community.” He founded a program called Asian Pacific Islander Re-Entry Orange County to help people coming out of jail.
Still, though Nguyen is not among the detainees currently held by ICE, he is among those who face potential deportation. He’s not a citizen of the United States, but Vietnam hasn’t said it will take him back. “I live every day with uncertainty and fear,” he said.
In Trinh’s case, he arrived in Orange County in 1980, where he attended private Catholic high schools, including Mater Dei, according to his attorneys. He’s married and a father to a 13-year-old son and an 18-year-old daughter who attends Cal State Long Beach. In 2015, he was arrested on a drug charge and served one year in prison. Then, after he was allegedly found in possession of a marijuana plant last year, he went back to jail. That’s where his odyssey with the immigration agency began.
Trinh was was ordered deported on July 27 and since then has been held at the Theo Lacy detention facility in Orange County.
“What we think is happening is that they’re rounding people up and hoping Vietnam will take them back,” Hoq said. “That’s a violation of law.”
The Vietnamese currently in immigration detention previously were charged with crimes but all have already served time for those incidents, the lawyers said. Since then, Hoq said, they have “reintegrated into society.”
The lawsuit filed in federal court in Santa Ana on Feb. 22 names ICE, Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens and other officials.
A similar lawsuit filed by the same group last October alleges ICE is ordering the deportation of Cambodian refugees, in many cases, for decades-old convictions. More than 100 Cambodian refugees were detained last October, many of them from Long Beach, Modesto and Stockton. Cambodia has accepted an average of 35 individuals for repatriation annually, but the U.S. government is pressuring that country to take more, attorneys said.
In both communities, ICE agents are often showing up at people’s homes or work places to arrest them.
“For those who believe in learning from your wrongs and being forgiven,” Hoq said, “this isn’t right.”