Deported to Asia: ‘This ain’t home. America’s my home’

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — It was fish for breakfast and fish for lunch and fish for dinner. “I hate fish,” Khan Hin said. What Hin wanted was a burger. Maybe a bowl of Cap’n Crunch. Or some Tater Tots. “I’m feisty,” he said, “for my Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.”

Hin’s palate is American. His vernacular, slang from the streets of Stockton, Calif., is American.

And his family’s experience is all too American. His older sister was at school in Stockton in 1989 when a man sprayed gunfire on the schoolyard. Five children ages 6 to 9, all of Cambodian or Vietnamese heritage, were killed. Nearly 30 others, including Hin’s sister, were injured. The killer had repeatedly spewed hatred of Asian immigrants.

At the hospital, Hin’s sister got to meet Michael Jackson, which was an American dream of sorts, although it wasn’t worth two bullets in her body.

But Hin, 33, isn’t American. Born in a Thai refugee camp, he came to the United States as a baby. His parents, refugees fleeing genocide in Cambodia, never claimed citizenship for their son, even though he was entitled to it. Until he was jailed at age 18 for auto theft, Hin had no idea he was only a legal permanent resident.

American law is uncompromising: Deportation applies to legal permanent residents who commit an aggravated felony in the United States. Such crimes include failing to appear in court or filing a false tax return, as well as more serious offenses. Deportees are barred from returning to the United States.

Hin had served five years and was holding down a job in California when Immigration and Customs Enforcement came for him. For 18 months, he shuffled through various detention centers across the United States. Three years ago, he was deported to Cambodia.

It was his first time in the country. He did not speak Khmer, the local language.

That’s how Hin ended up on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, in the house of a family friend he couldn’t understand, eating fish three meals a day.

“It was rats, pigs, babies all over the place,” he said. “It was the ghetto but badder. This ain’t home. America’s my home.”

While President Donald Trump has brought renewed attention to the fate of legal and unauthorized immigrants alike, deportations of Cambodians began in 2002, when the government of Cambodia signed a repatriation agreement with the Bush administration. So far, around 600 legal permanent residents of Cambodian descent have been deported from the United States, many directly from prison.

The number is likely to increase significantly this year, as Trump cracks down on green card holders with criminal records. ICE tracks 1,900 Cambodians who are subject to orders of removal from the United States.

The Khmer Vulnerability Aid Organization, which receives American funding to help deportees start new lives in Cambodia, expects around 200 people to arrive this year. Around 100 Cambodians who had already completed their prison terms were rounded up in immigration raids in October.

Citing human rights concerns, the Cambodian government suspended the repatriation agreement last year. But the United States responded by slapping visa restrictions on Cambodian officials, and a trickle of deportations began in December. In February, the two governments held talks on the repatriations, and 16 deportees have arrived this year.

Asian immigrants are often regarded as a model minority group in the United States, with higher education and income levels than other ethnic groups. But the 270,000 people of Cambodian descent who live in the United States are among the poorest in the country.

Many Cambodian refugees were farmers who fled the Khmer Rouge with no schooling or savings. Once in the United States, they scrambled to get menial jobs, like packing fruit or sewing clothes.

“My mom was illiterate, she didn’t speak any English,” said Jimmy Hiem, who was deported to Cambodia in 2016. “I’d get up to go to school, and she’d be sewing. I’d go to bed, and she’d be sewing. How was she supposed to know anything about citizenship and stuff like that?”