Cambodian refugees to be deported from U.S.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The Trump administration is preparing to deport the largest group yet of legal Cambodian immigrants over the next few days, according to human rights groups and a U.S. official, continuing a wave of deportation that has fallen heavily on refugees who fled the upheaval surrounding the Vietnam War.
The new deportations include an expected 46 people who are scheduled to arrive in Cambodia on Dec. 19, the U.S. official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of deportations that had not been officially announced.
Many of those being deported have few or no memories of Cambodia, as they were part of an exodus fleeing Khmer Rouge massacres and were granted refugee status in the United States. Some actually have green cards and have been convicted of a felony while in the United States, though often from many years ago.
President Trump has continued to place harsh limits on immigration and asylum at the center of his national policy, and over the past year, the White House has pushed to greatly expand the number of foreign residents who are eligible for deportation.
That effort has included what U.S. officials describe as a renewed push by the White House this month to negotiate with Vietnam to take back a category of refugees in the United States — those who immigrated before 1995 — who had been considered protected under an earlier agreement.
In the case of Cambodians, some deportations began in 2002 under a bilateral agreement signed by both countries. But the Trump White House has greatly stepped up the process, widening the numbers of Cambodians it considers deportable. Rights groups have criticized the deportation push because many of those designated for deportation will be separated from families who remain in the U.S. Others are the children of Cambodians who fled torture and massacre by the Khmer Rouge and are being returned to a country in which they have never lived or of which they have little memory.
During the Vietnam War, the U.S. secretly dropped 2.7 million tons of explosives on Cambodia in operations that some credit with partially enabling the Khmer Rouge’s rise to power.