SOUTHEAST ASIAN REFUGEES

SOUTHEAST ASIAN AMERICAN REFUGEE DEPORTATION

Since the early 2000s, the Southeast Asian American refugee community, consisting of diasporic populations from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, has been facing unprecedented levels of criminal detention and deportation. Once fleeing war, genocide, poverty, and persecution, Southeast Asian refugee communities in the United States experience resettlement pains in under-resourced neighborhoods with high poverty rates and low rates of educational attainment. Community members were often thrust into the school-to-prison-to-deportation pipeline, falling into crime as youth and young adults and serving prison sentences that made them eligible for removal proceedings as legal non-citizens. To date, more than 700 Cambodian Americans have been deported since 2002, while more than 1,800 still face final orders of deportation, mostly due to criminal convictions. Likewise, more than 7,800 Vietnamese Americans face orders of criminal deportation, many of them living day to day in deportation limbo. The Southeast Asian American refugee community is facing a crisis to which policymakers, community advocates, and social work practitioners are responding. This website is intended to be a resource for learning about the community’s immigrational circumstances and ways to get involved and support impacted community members.