She was sent to the Central California Womens Facility, the largest womens prison in the state. You either fight the system, or you end up in TJ, said Muoz, referring to Tijuana, Mexico. Theres a conversation Phoeun You wants to have with his parents face-to-face. I thought I could handle it. She reassured herself, As long as he does not put his hands on me, then Im fine.. For nearly two decades, Lundy Khoy lived with the fear of deportation. Her organising efforts left Prasad impressed. She secured a pardon in 2016 from then-Virginia Gov. Nourns parents, however, continued to have high hopes for her schooling. But a teenage mistake thrust her into the crosshairs of federal laws passed amid an immigration crackdown, leading her to spend half her life looking over her shoulder, striving to prove her worth in the only country shed ever known. After 25 years behind bars, he was granted early releaseonly to be immediately detained by ICE. She met her first boyfriend and started experimenting with drugs and alcohol. For many, deportations are so quick that families cant say goodbye. Domestic abuse survivor Ny Nourn lived this pipeline. With the violence at home, she struggled to concentrate. Shy and quiet, Nourn had few friends to confide in. Though she no longer lives with shackles and bars, Nourn insists she doesnt feel free not yet at least. Anoop Prasad, a senior attorney at San Franciscos Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus, receives a dozen letters from individuals like her every week. It felt like a novelty to climb into the backseat of a car without chains wrapped around her waist. When you come out you are no longer a hero, said Flores, who spent two years and four months in ICE detention. As a child, Nourn had learned a saying in Cambodian: Men are gold. In order not to think about the violence at home, Nourn tried to bury herself in her schoolwork. Prosecutors characterised the homicide as a premeditated attack, with Nourn complicit in luring Stevens to his death. You is one of thousands of refugees and immigrants who have experienced what advocates call double punishment: direct transfer to ICE and eventual deportation immediately after finishing a prison sentence, even if they have permanent residency in the U.S. Yous friends and family were hoping Californias VISION Act would pass in 2021 before his transfer, but it didnt. Prasad knew conditions in Cambodia could be challenging, especially for a newcomer with few language skills and no support system to rely on. She went to work every day at 5 a.m. at a teleconferencing company and then attended community college classes. She points to stereotypes like the model minority myth, which associates Asians with success, not violence and incarceration. She raised Nourn alone in those early years. She would no longer have to worry about being separated from her family, being forced to leave the only country she had never known. It came as a shock to learn she might be deported upon release. Flores, a formerly incarcerated firefighter, served five years and eight months for assault with a semiautomatic, a charge levied at Flores by his partner, who later recanted her statement. Make a donation today. By that point, Nourn had moved in with Barker and his wife: Barker explained her presence by saying she was the daughter of a family friend, in need of a place to stay. Chanthon Buns story provides a glimpse into what would happen if the VISION Act passes. Of course, I would lie and say, Oh, I fell in the shower, bumped into a chair, Nourn says. It was eye-opening. ICE transfers also disproportionately impact Latinx and African communitiesLatinx people are the largest population of deportees. After 16 years of incarceration, she was transferred to ICE and only released after Newsom pardoned her. She has lived it herself. Every day was survival for me, Nourn recalls. Every day, Linda Khoy said, it was like, okay, are they going to deport her?. Khoy reached for her lawyers arm in disbelief. You are no longer that person that saved lives.. And just the ability to talk to folks and hopefully uplift their days also would be meaningful for me.. You could pretend to be anyone you wanted to be., There, in those online spaces, Nourn could feel wanted. By then, more than 20 years had passed since she was caught with seven ecstasy pills in her purse, and it was more than 16 years since a resultant conviction triggered a final order of deportation. She said she felt such relief that she had to restrain herself from jumping up and down. Three years later, the murder of David Stevens remained unsolved. So she doubled down and kept on writing. A Maryland immigrant hoped to delay his deportation until Biden took office. If hes deported to Cambodia, he wont ever get the chance. Nourn, whose family fled the Cambodian genocide, was sentenced to life without parole after her abusive boyfriend shot and killed her boss. Many were domestic violence survivors. She let him off the leash. He described Nourn as a selfish, cold-blooded killer. But Nourn doesnt just speak out about that pipeline. Because I dont get that.. He was eventually released after the ACLU of Southern California filed a class-action lawsuit, but he still faces deportation by ICE and is seeking a pardon from Gov. Over the internet, Barker claimed to be in his mid-20s. I was still a little bit in a state of shock, he said. The bill, introduced by Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo, would close the main pipeline for ICE transfers by preventing local law enforcement from assisting ICE. He also noticed his peers associated Cambodian people with poverty and gangs. So she told them the story of what happened that December night in 1998. But when the parole date came, rather than be released, the man was transferred to ICE detention. Nourn was only 17 years old when she met Ronald Barker, a married Vietnamese man 17 years her senior, in August 1998. Among the Cambodians who have been deported are a 34-year-old construction worker caught urinating in public in Texas and a 22-year-old Marine charged with manslaughter after driving drunk in a crash that killed his sister, Hing said. She was denied her constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel, the appeals court concluded. She remembers them asking her to stand spread-eagle against a wall, then placing her in a cell in a van headed to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Hampton, Va. On the drive, she prayed and meditated. Unfortunately, she says, thats how I met my co-defendant.. Still, Nourn and Barker grew intimate quickly. She was charged with aiding and abetting a murder. Fearing for her life, she complied. Nourn says he forced her to undergo two abortions against her will. You expect someone thats tatted-up, that has a history of being locked up, being arrested, that used drugs, stuff like that. But when Kim arrived at the Yuba County Jail in Marysville, California, the problem became clear. He remembers that, on his first day visiting the prison, a man came up to welcome him: Youre Cambodian? Early experiences like that inspired Tan to get involved with the Asian Prisoner Support Committee in college. So Kim rushed to a discount department store and grabbed what she hoped would fit: a pair of joggers and a T-shirt. When he could have been here with me., Grace Deng is a freelance writer interested in race, identity and equity reporting. Born in a Thai refugee camp after her parents fled genocide in Cambodia, Khoy came to the United States as a toddler, never thinking much about the difference between herself and her two American-born younger siblings. And if a family lost its breadwinner to deportation, the entire household risked spiraling into poverty. 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Not only did seemingly minor crimes like drug possession and shoplifting become cause for deportation, but the laws were retroactive. Another member of the legal team, Whitney R. OByrne, realized that Khoys first lawyer had given nearly identical incorrect legal advice to another client. He had seen cases like hers end with clients stranded an ocean away, deported to a country of which they knew very little. Nourns new surroundings felt even more hopeless than before. You are no longer that person that was helping the community. People that are like gang members. Every day since 1996, we deport people who are like Lundy, said Bill Ong Hing, a professor of law and migration studies at the University of San Francisco who has represented dozens of immigrants facing deportation. An older Black woman, she offered Nourn a shower puff on her first day as a welcoming gift: it had a little animal face sewn into its centre. Women are cloth. Nourn understood it to mean that men had value and women were only useful in the household. Learning about Nys story through the activist community, though, gave him hope. The story of how Nourn, 41, first came to be imprisoned is the story of her emergence as an advocate. Khoys lawyers ultimately relied on an ancient writ in Virginia law and a sympathetic prosecutors office, providing a path for her in a system that immigration reform advocates say is broken. Nourns father had abandoned them both when Nourn was only one. Her client hadnt known freedom since 2003. You could just step out, and thats freedom on the other side, she recalls. He told her the things that she longed to hear: that he loved her, that he wanted to marry her. And if she tried to leave, he threatened to kill her and her family. She knew that relative to many in similar situations, she was lucky to have been able to stay in the United States for so long and that her lawyers had come up with a solution they believed would end her nightmare for good. Moua identifies closely with that community. Al Jazeera Centre for Public Liberties & Human Rights. It bled into their relationships and into how I was raised, Nourn says matter-of-factly, her eyes downcast behind a pair of round-rimmed glasses. You are no longer that. How her fight against this system became a fight for others. Her phone started buzzing with messages of congratulations from her well-wishers. She had started working at a mortgage company, where her colleagues noticed the bruises on her arms and legs. Immigration experts say hundreds of thousands of immigrants many of them longtime legal residents charged with minor, nonviolent offenses have been deported since 1996, when Congress enacted immigration laws that limited judicial discretion and broadened the range of offenses for which a person could be deported. And yet, as her date with the parole board loomed nearer, Prasad, her attorney, held little hope that she could escape deportation. It was isolating. With the governors pardon, Nourn had protection that no court could overturn a scenario she faced with her Convention Against Torture application. As the co-director of the Asian Prisoner Support Committee and an organiser for the domestic violence advocacy group Survived and Punished Nourn has rapidly gained a reputation as one of the most high-profile voices in the fight to end what activists in the United States call the prison-to-deportation pipeline. Its easy to be angry. And when a notice went out to all parents that an active shooter was on campus at Tans school, his parents came running. My parents were blowing up my phone: Are you safe? Still, Nourn kept busy. She was just not willing to accept that deportation was inevitable, he recalls. Ultimately, it led her to testify in Congress and write a widely shared letter to then-President Donald Trump before ending in recent months where it had begun: in an Arlington County courtroom. The idea that Khoy could be ripped out of her life in the United States and sent to a place to which she had no connections was wildly disproportionate with the facts of her case, Dehghani-Tafti said. It didnt even matter that Nourn had never been to Cambodia, the country she would be deported to. But even when her Convention Against Torture application was granted protecting her from deportation ICE appealed the decision. When she got to the meeting, though, she was surrounded by immigration agents. As a child, Tan observed his parents contending with post-traumatic stress. Her fight began quietly kept secret even from extended family. Both were deported. He insisted that Nourn keep their relationship a secret, that her parents wouldnt approve. His organisation advocates on behalf of individuals like Nourn to change federal law and protect immigrants from penalties like mandatory detention and deportation.
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