Thread: Hun Sen Tells US to Stop Deporting Ethnic Cambodian Felons to His Country

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen called on the United States Thursday to end its practice of forcibly deporting convicts with Cambodian heritage to the Southeast Asian nation, a policy he said “splits up families.”

“We request an amendment to the agreement on deportation. Such deportation splits up families of our Cambodian people,” Hun Sen said at a speech at a graduation ceremony in Phnom Penh.

“When they are jailed in the U.S., their families are allowed to visit them in the prison. However, when they are deported, they are far apart (from their families). The Cambodian government needs to address this matter,” he said.

Under a 2002 agreement, which the Cambodian Foreign Ministry said remains in effect until renegotiated, some 500 convicted felons of Cambodian descent after serving their sentences have been repatriated to a country most have never visited with a language they do not speak.

On April 25, the Cambodian Foreign Ministry spokesperson issued a statement saying that the agreement has been widely criticized in Cambodia and among Cambodian Americans but had not been discontinued.

“The spokesperson rejects any information that the above memorandum has been discontinued and wishes to emphasize that Cambodia wants to amend the above agreement commensurate with the values of humanity and compassion,” the statement said.

“The agreement shall remain in effect while both parties are discussing the amendment,” it said.

The AFP news agency, reporting from Phnom Penh, quoted a U.S. embassy spokesman as saying Washington was aware of Cambodia’s desire to amend the memorandum.

Hun Sen Tells US to Stop Deporting Ethnic Cambodian Felons to His Country

The Immigration issue rears its ugly head again.

Castro exported many criminals to the USA; before the Soviets went out of business they kindly sent us many of their mafia guys.

These kids are most likely different in that their parents are probably law abiding, but worked two or three jobs to make ends meet- and let their children wild.

OT, but kinda rich to read about Hun Sen preaching about "humanity and compassion..."

Background story

Strangers in their own land: the Cambodians deported from US and how they are making a home from home

When the US accepted refugees from Cambodia in the 1970s, it didn’t give them citizenship. After 1996, if they committed an offence they could be deported. We talk to some of those sent back to a place they’d never known

Ry Mam flashes a smile and passes two beers across the bar. Upbeat Cambodian music blares from speakers hooked up to a screen tuned to YouTube, while a mix of locals and expats spill out onto the street, playing games to welcome in the Khmer New Year.

“It’s the last day before everything closes for New Year,” he say, welcoming a stream of regulars through the door of Ry’s Kitchen. “I wanted to do something special for the community.”

It is in the laid-back Cambodian city of Battambang that the 41-year-old has built a life for himself, one far removed from the one he had in the United States, which he called home for 32 years.

As one of more than 540 men and women deported from the US to Cambodia after committing an offence – including minor misdemeanours – 6½ years ago, Ry Mam was torn from the life he knew, sent to the kingdom and told he could never return.

Born in Cambodia, Ry Mam fled the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime, which ruled from 1975 to 1979, with his family. They settled in a refugee camp on the Thai border and, just before his second birthday, he was sent to the US, where he eventually settled in California with his family.

Growing up in a tough neighbourhood riddled with racial tensions, as a youth Ry Mam joined a gang. He soon started racking up felonies, serving three separate jail terms for drug offences, possession of a firearm and other aggravated charges.

Upon release in 2005, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers visited Ry Mam, warning him he faced deportation to Cambodia.

Five years passed, however, and Ry Mam rebuilt his life, worked two jobs, paid taxes and enjoyed time with his family. Then, in 2010, he received the call from ICE he had been dreading. He spent two months in a detention centre before being deported.

“I had no memories of Cambodia,” he says. “I didn’t know jack. I was like, ‘What the hell?’ It was almost a joke. All my family were back in America. I spoke a little Khmer, I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t know anything.”

Between 1975 and 1979 an estimated 1.7 million people – 21 per cent of the population – died under the Khmer Rouge. Escaping starvation and atrocities, hundreds of thousands of Cambodians fled and ended up in refugee camps in Thailand.

In the 1980s, the US started accepting refugees, with more than 178,000 taken in, according to the Returnee Integration Support Centre, an NGO that supports deportees when they land in Cambodia.

Many families were relocated to underprivileged neighbourhoods, where race and turf wars were rife. Families had to deal with the trauma they had escaped, while settling into a foreign land and coping with culture shock. All too often, younger generations fell into lives of crime.

Refugees were granted legal permanent residence in the US but not automatically given citizenship. In the 1990s, the US drafted a law stating that non-citizens who commit an offence will be deported after serving their sentence. This was passed in 1996 and agreements were negotiated with countries across the globe to accept deportees.

In 2002, the US-Cambodian Joint Commission on Repatriation was signed and deportations started immediately. Under the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), all returnees are exiled from the US for life.

To date, more than 540 people have been extradited. The latest five – including four of the so-called Minnesota Eight, who made global headlines after high-profile campaigns to halt their deportation – landed in March. They are the first to be repatriated since last September.

“These deportations are the inhumane separation of families,” says Sophea Phea, an organiser of 1Love Cambodia, a movement fighting to reunite families. “It is a violation of our human rights. America took us in as refugees. We grew up in that society, in those communities. We grew up having to survive and now we’re paying the ultimate price.”

Phea was born in a refugee camp in Thailand. Having never set foot on Cambodian soil, at 18 months old she moved with her family to the US, where they settled in Long Beach, California. In 2006, she was given a two-year prison sentence for credit card fraud, serving half the time.

She was released and spent four years rehabilitating, returning to college, finding a job and taking care of her son, who is now 13. In 2011, ICE came knocking on Phea’s door. She spent a month in a detention centre before being sent to Cambodia with just US$150 in her pocket and the clothes on her back.

“With culture and language, I’m totally American,” she says. “America was all I knew. It’s my home. My family are there, I went to school there, I grew up in America. I’d never been to Cambodia until I arrived in 2011. I had no idea what to do.”

Phea’s first few years were an uphill struggle. Like many other returnees, the 34-year-old sank into depression as she struggled far away from her son and large family. Unable to speak fluent Khmer, the language barrier was a daily challenge and securing work was tough. And the question of identity was raised daily as locals rejected her, just as the US had.

“I speak Khmer like a foreigner. I dress like a foreigner. To them, I am a foreigner,” she says.

Despite these hurdles, hard work and determination have helped her embrace her new life. Like Ry Mam, who seized the opportunity to build his own business, starting by selling Cuban sandwiches from a street cart, many returnees have created social enterprises and organisations that give back to the community, as well as business and training opportunities for locals.

“It is unfortunate that we were torn from our families, but we have to turn this into an opportunity to help the community and build ourselves,” says Phea. “Some of us used our experiences from the streets of the US to help Khmer youth steer away from gangs and drugs through hip hop, and there are people providing different types of services in the Cambodian market. These are the people helping to inspire others not to give up. It’s not the end of the world.”

A year ago, Ry Mam upgraded his street cart to the Street 1.5 lounge bar and restaurant. Upstairs is a small children’s library, full of donated books – a rarity for many of Battambang’s impoverished youngsters.

“Cambodia has given me more opportunities than back home,” he says. “I don’t know what I’d be doing if I was in America. It has been a challenge and it was hard for the first few years, but now this is home.”

Despite carving new lives for themselves, for some returnees the fight for freedom and the future fate of those detained in the US is strong.

In 2015, 1Love Cambodia formed as an offshoot of the Philadelphia-based 1Love Movement, which has been opposing the deportations since 2010. The group has been lobbying the Cambodian government to revise the MoU.

For example, the repatriation agreement between the US and Vietnam states that Vietnam will not accept any Vietnamese citizens who entered America before July 12, 1995.

“Cambodia and the US has never met to review the MoU since the signing to see if there were things working out or it needed to be amended,” says 1Love Cambodia organiser Kalvin Heng, who was sentenced to a year in prison in 1999 and held in custody for two years before being deported a year later, in 2004.

“People have been released and are back in society living normal lives, raising families, owning homes, and some even becoming grandparents [in the US]. It doesn’t make any sense to have this deportation order hanging over someone’s head when they have reformed and are productive members of society.”

1Love Cambodia has held several meetings with Cambodian ministers, who have agreed to look into the issue. Ministry of Interior spokesman General Khieu Sopheak has said the “agreement should be on the table for rediscussion or renegotiation”. He added a proposal is being drafted before being presented to the US embassy.

US embassy spokesman Jay Raman says talks are under way but the legality of the MoU stands. “The US believes that each country has an obligation under international law to accept the return of its nationals who are not eligible to remain in the US or any other country.”

However, with US President Donald Trump tightening up immigration laws and relations between the US and Cambodian governments seemingly tense, a tough battle lies ahead.

“The US is always talking about human rights and democracy, and pointing the finger at every other country except itself,” says Heng. “It needs to look in the mirror and see the pain and suffering it is causing throughout the world with its failed national and foreign policies that create a domino effect, while violating international human rights on all levels, especially with deporting people and separating families.”

Strangers in their own land: the Cambodians deported from US and how they are making a home from home | South China Morning Post

So, these people were Permanent Residents (green card) who never bothered to become American Citizens. As a green card can be revoked for serious crime, that leaves them being Cambodian and subject to deportation. They can't get a visa to get back in the US because they are criminals.

^Yeah I've read those stories as well.

Another problematic situation is the illegals that cross in to the US from Mexico. The parents never get legal, but their children born on US soil are automatically US citizens, per the 14th Amendment- which was enacted to ensure that former black slaves were not denied the right to vote. (Which they often were any way...)

I'll bet Hun Sen won't complain if that opposition guy and a few activists are deported from the US, though.

There was a story in the Seattle newspapers 10 years ago of a Cambodian who came to the US, raised in Seattle with his Cambodian family, but his parents (and him) forgot to do the paperwork to become a citizen. He went to high school in Seattle, worked etc.

He was 19.

Was in a gang, and committed crimes (felonies).

He was not a US citizen.

He was deported.

They (rightfully) sent the idiot to Cambodia where he knew no one and none of the language.

It's fair. He didn't want citizenship and he was a gang member who committed felonies.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Fuck off back to Cambodia or abide by the law.

Not rocket surgery.

rocket surgery

Sounds complicated.

Originally Posted by Lancelot

^Yeah I've read those stories as well.

Another problematic situation is the illegals that cross in to the US from Mexico. The parents never get legal, but their children born on US soil are automatically US citizens, per the 14th Amendment- which was enacted to ensure that former black slaves were not denied the right to vote. (Which they often were any way...)

Ironically it's the angry old white men keeping this going.

If they suddenly start saying the constitution should be changed, they can no longer bleat about protecting the 2nd amendment.

Great innit.

This impassioned talk of family and fairness coming from a former Khmer Rouge commander promoting the cycles of nepotistic dictatorships.

Why does anyone continue to take this reincarnation seriously - in any fashion.
Should've been taken care of decades ago.

Well at least Thailand wouldn't do that to Cambodians.

Well, splitting families is inhumane. The only solution i can see is to ship them all back. Might give them an incentive to raise their kids right.

Just asking, by what transportation did these released Cuban prisoners use to get over to the U.S.A.
Was it laid on, paid for by who?

Interesting the U.S. government will arbitrarily grant "designated" amnesty to convicted foreign felons, whenever it suits their schizoid purposes to do so. In fact, the alpha-dog decision makers in the U.S. government, are not quite as smart, as they believe themselves to be.

Cambodia Cooperating With US on Deportations, Foreign Ministry Says



Cambodia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed surprise on Thursday at a U.S. decision to deny visas to senior members of the Cambodian government, denying accusations that it has ended cooperation with United States efforts to repatriate Cambodian nationals convicted of crimes in the U.S. and calling linkage of the two issues “unreasonable.”


“Cambodia is still prepared to accept its nationals who will be deported by the US and will try by all means to ensure that those Cambodians will be successfully reintegrated into society and begin their new lives with the fullest decency and dignity,” the foreign ministry said in its Sept. 14 statement.


Striking a more defiant note, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said however that Cambodia will now retaliate against U.S. moves to refuse entry to Cambodian diplomats and other officials, adding that he has ordered suspension of a joint program to recover and send home the remains of U.S. soldiers killed in Cambodia during the Vietnam War.


“So far, only 40 [of these] have been found, and there remain around 40 more,” Hun Sen said in a Sept. 14 interview with government-aligned Cambodian media outlet Fresh News. “Cooperation in this search will now be placed under suspension, pending the settlement of, and improvements in, various issues between Cambodia and the U.S.”


The U.S. action on visas for officials—which also covers Eritrea, Sierra Leone, and Guinea—stems from a law under which convicted felons of foreign nationality are deported after they have served their prison sentences.



'Ready to travel'


Addressing a meeting on Thursday at Cambodia’s Royal School of Administration, foreign minister Prak Sokhon said that Cambodian officials are ready to travel to the U.S. to interview 26 Cambodian nationals now subject to deportation, adding that he had earlier asked that deportees be given job training in the U.S. before being sent home.


He had also requested that returns be made only on a voluntary basis, he said.


“But our demands could not be met.”


“Therefore, so that this program will not be interrupted, we have officials ready to travel to the U.S. to interview those 26 people who are now subject to deportation. We have never refused to take them back, but we just want to make sure that they are truly Khmers, and not Vietnamese or Laotians,” he said.


Speaking to RFA’s Khmer Service, Soeung Senkarona—a senior investigation official for the Cambodia-based ADHOC rights group—said that Cambodians living in the United States should be careful not to break U.S. laws., as they could then be forced home.


Meanwhile, the Cambodian government should welcome back any who are deported, he said.


“We want Cambodia and the U.S. to resume their cooperation, especially in regard to issues of human rights violations and the upholding of democracy,” he said.


​
Cambodia Cooperating With US on Deportations, Foreign Ministry Says

US urged to aid Cambodia deportees

Interior Minister Sar Kheng has asked the United States to increase funding for Cambodian deportees to enable them to build a new life in the kingdom.


Mr Kheng met with Carl Risch, US assistant secretary of state for Consular Affairs, and other US embassy officials including the US ambassador to Cambodia at the Interior Ministry on Friday.


Cambodia agreed with the US’s request to continue the implementation of a 2002 memorandum of understanding that allows for the repatriation of Cambodians from the US, according to Mr Kheng’s cabinet officer Phat Sophanith.


“Samdech requested the US side to do whatever they can to increase support for Cambodians that need to be repatriated to Cambodia so they can be successfully integrated into society,” Mr Sophanith said.


Mr Kheng said Cambodia has not avoided taking back its citizens, but everything needed to be thoroughly reviewed first.


Mr Kheng also told Mr Risch he hoped the US would consider lifting visa sanctions on employees of Cambodia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry after the repatriation process began anew, according to Mr Sophanith.


Mr Risch said the US would consider withdrawing the sanctions once the process had begun.


Mr Risch will also travel to Thailand and Myanmar to meet with his counterparts to discuss a range of consular issues, including their international legal obligations to accept the return of nationals who have been ordered removed.


A US district judge, in a ruling on January 25, blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to immediately deport 92 Cambodian citizens still in custody in the US. The deportees had been previously convicted of criminal charges, ordered deported, and released from immigration custody, only to be rearrested years later.


US District Judge Cormac Carney ruled the Cambodians were not to be deported before they had been given the opportunity to have the legality of their convictions and deportations re-evaluated in court.


“It is disingenuous for the government to claim that throughout the many years that petitioners were permitted to live and work on supervised release, they should not have built up any expectation that they would be permitted to remain in the country,” he wrote.


Mr Risch said more than 600 Cambodians have been deported from the US since 2002.


“We had nine in December and two in January and in 2017, a total of around 40 people, and about 600 people since 2002,” he said.

US urged to aid Cambodia deportees - Khmer Times

Former US convicts arrive in Cambodia

A total of 43 Cambodian citizens who were convicted of crimes in the US arrived yesterday in the Kingdom.


A senior immigration police officer said that all 43 deportees arrived at Phnom Penh International Airport at about 7.30am.


Upon arrival, they were brought to waiting minivans and were driven off with immigration police officers.


Keo Vanthan, spokesman for the General Department of Immigration, said that three women were part of the group deported from the United States.


Immigration police officer Dim Ra said the returnees were sent to the Khmer Vulnerability Aid Organisation, a partner of the US embassy, where they would be provided accommodation.


“They were sent to the organisation but some people had their relatives come to pick them up,” he said.


US embassy spokesman David Josar said 43 Cambodian citizens were returned to Cambodia yesterday by the US Department of Homeland Security. The returnees were subject to lawful removal orders issued by a US immigration judge, he added.


“We appreciate the government of Cambodia’s cooperation in the removal process and its willingness to meet its obligations under international law to accept the return of its nationals who are not eligible to remain in the United States,” he said via email.


Immigration police drive Cambodians away from Phnom Penh International Airport after they were deported from the US for committing
crimes. KT/Mai Vireak
Kevin Lo, staff attorney with Asian Americans Advancing Justice and the law firm Sidley Austin LLP, said the 43 Cambodians left El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday evening. He added many of them were supposed to be deported in December.


“The people that were deported either did not have options, were not able to speak with attorneys or simply were so tired of the endless detention and transfers across the United States that they were too worn down to fight their cases again in immigration court,” Mr Lo said.


From 1975 until the end of the 20th century, more than 145,000 Cambodian refugees were accepted into the US, along with 42,000 non-refugees, part of an influx of Southeast Asians displaced by war.


Many were born in refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines, and have never set foot in Cambodia, nor speak Khmer.


US Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Brendan Raedy did not respond to a request for comment yesterday but said in late November at least 534 possible deportees were waiting for travel documents from Cambodia, with some requests stretching back to 2008.


More than 1,900 Cambodian nationals living in the United States, 1,412 of which have criminal convictions, are subject to a final order of removal.


Kalvin Hang, member of 1Love Cambodia, said the advocacy group has contributed items to returnees such as toothbrushes, towels, face cloths, deodorant and other toiletries, noodles and sweets.


“I disagree with the policy of the US to deport them to Cambodia because it is inhuman and separates them from their families,” he said.


Many returnees served long prison sentences in the US, but changed their attitudes by working in their communities and should not have been deported, added Mr Hang.


Former US convicts arrive in Kingdom - Khmer Times

Originally Posted by misskit

we just want to make sure that they are truly Khmers, and not Vietnamese or Laotians,

How does one determine such things? A tattoo somewhere visible?

Originally Posted by OhOh

How does one determine such things? A tattoo somewhere visible?

They all look alike, anyway....