Newsom pardons Santa Clara County man facing deportation

A Santa Clara County man who came to the United States from Vietnam as a child refugee but now could be deported because of a more than decade-old criminal offense received a pardon from Gov. Gavin Newsom this week.

The 2007 assault with a deadly weapon conviction was 37-year-old Quoc Nguyen’s only offense since he came to the U.S. with his family when he was 10.

As President Donald Trump has sought to remove deportation protections for Vietnamese-Americans with criminal records, Nguyen is among thousands who are at risk of being sent back to the country they fled as refugees.

That risk may have diminished this week, when Gov. Gavin Newsom issued seven pardons on Wednesday, one of which was for Nguyen. Most of the other pardons were for drug offenses.

Newsom, who frequently spars with Trump over protections for immigrants, wrote in his pardon order that Nguyen’s “impending deportation” and the potential that he could be separated from his fam

ily “further justifies” the clemency order. Newsom has continued a practice, begun by former Gov. Jerry Brown, of using his pardon authority to protect refugees at risk of deportation.

Nguyen was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon for joining several other people in attacking a man in 2004, according to the governor’s office. The charge carried an enhancement for being in a street gang.

Nguyen spent a year and a half in prison and nearly three more years on parole, but has since then “has demonstrated that he is living an upright life,” the governor’s office wrote.

He has a stable job that allows Nguyen to support his elderly mother and his girlfriend, who is completing nursing school, a spokeswoman from Newsom’s office said.

The Trump administration last year unilaterally changed its interpretation of a 2008 agreement with Vietnam, which had largely prevented the deportations of immigrants and refugees from the country who arrived in the United States before 1995. The move could allow for people such as Nguyen with prior criminal convictions to be deported.

The status of Nguyen’s deportation proceedings was not entirely clear Thursday, and attempts to reach him by phone were unsuccessful.