Emotional return of a U.S. citizen
A California man mistakenly targeted for deportation in 2015 — which led him to move to Cambodia — returned home Wednesday, reuniting with dozens of family members and supporters at San Francisco International Airport.
Even he didn’t know until November that he was a U.S. citizen.
About 75 people spread out across the International Terminal in the evening, many from Fresno, where he lives. They danced to traditional Cambodian music, sang and passed around donuts to welcome Sok Loeun, 35, who left the country voluntarily five years ago after he said immigration agents threatened to deport him. Loeun, who was brought to the U.S. at 1 year old, had no idea he’d been a citizen since he was 12.
His odyssey points to the deep complexities of U.S. immigration, a system often difficult to navigate and comprehend, particularly for families who have few resources. In rare cases, U.S. citizens like Loeun are mistakenly told they will be deported.
This is the story of one of those immigrants, and how he untangled the mess and discovered the truth.
“Thank you everyone. Thank god,” Loeun said quietly to the crowd that descended on him, chanting, “Welcome home!” as three supporters beat drums that reverberated throughout the terminal. He declined to address the crowd, and the family asked for privacy.
Loeun was born in a refugee camp
in Thailand to parents who fled the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, a Communist regime of the late 1970s responsible for the deaths of about two million people. The family immigrated to Fresno in 1985 and obtained legal residency.
Loeun’s mother became a U.S. citizen in 1996, automatically passing down her citizenship to Loeun, then 12.
Children born outside of the U.S. automatically acquire citizenship if they are under the age of 18 and living in the U.S. while at least one parent is a citizen.
There was just one problem in Loeun’s case: No one from the Immigration and Naturalization Service — now the Department of Homeland Security — changed the official record to reflect that he was a citizen, according to his attorney, Anoop Prasad, of the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco.
Even Loeun’s mother didn’t know.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said Thursday it won’t comment on individual cases.
The omission would prove dire for Loeun.
In 2012, he was convicted of felony possession of marijuana. Federal law says legal residents lose their status if they’re convicted of a felony.
That caused Loeun a huge problem three years later.
He traveled to Cambodia in 2015 to visit family. But when he tried to clear customs at SFO upon his return, agents stopped him, Loeun told his attorney. Although the agents let Loeun back into the U.S., they saw that he had a felony conviction and warned that he would soon be deported because of it, said Prasad.
“All the pieces they needed were in front of them,” he said. “It takes minutes to figure out that he’s a citizen. There’s no reason why DHS should’ve made that big of a blunder.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, declined to comment.
“As a matter of policy, U.S. Customs and Border Protection does not comment on pending immigration cases,” a spokesman said in an email. “However, lack of comment should not be construed as agreement or stipulation with any of the allegations.”
A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said
Loeun was never in custody.
Derivative citizenship — meaning citizenship passed down to children though the naturalization of their parents — is one of the most complicated concepts in immigration law, said Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst for the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
"It's very understandable that foreign nationals themselves wouldn't know whether they had acquired citizenship, especially if they have other IDs and they're able to get by with those other IDs and they haven't been doing a lot of traveling," Pierce said.
Immigrants who acquire citizenship do not automatically receive notice from the government and normally have to apply to receive proof, Pierce said. And government agencies don’t always have easy access to an individual’s legal status, she said.
Immigration agencies have also had a “huge issue with the transfer of paperwork records to digital,” Pierce added.
Loeun left voluntarily to Cambodia in 2015.
“He was feeling like he didn't have very good options,” Prasad said. “He was a single dad. He had three kids. He made the calculation that if he’s going to get deported anyway, it was better to do it on his own terms and not spend months or years awaiting deportation.”
He settled in the western city of Pursat, washing motorcycles for $8 a day. He married in Cambodia and started a wedding planning business with his wife, and the couple had a child, now 3.
One day, in November, Loeun heard that American lawyers were in the capital, Phnom Penh, giving a legal workshop for deportees. He went.
It was there that Loeun learned that he was a U.S. citizen.
That set in motion a series of events that landed Loeun at SFO Wednesday. His wife plans to apply for a green card to come to California with the couple’s toddler, Prasad said.
“I’m upset that we’ve had to endure this pain,” said Loeun’s younger sister, Sokhum Loeun, 32. “I’m upset that it’s taken this long for this to happen. The U.S. government definitely failed us.”
Loeun said her brother requested an InNOut cheeseburger after his arrival. But she had other plans.
“I want him to try a Popeyes chicken sandwich,” she said, referring to the newest cult favorite.