CAMBODIA DEPORTEES (KAY/MALONEY) -- PBS NHWE MAY 7, 2017
CREDITS:
IN TONIGHT’S SIGNATURE
SEGMENT WE TAKE A LOOK AT A SLICE OF U-S IMMIGRATION POLICY THAT IS NOT VERY
WELL KNOWN. EVERY YEAR, THE U-S DEPORTS THOUSANDS OF IMMIGRANTS AFTER
THEY COMPLETE THEIR PRISON TERMS -- INCLUDING GREEN CARD HOLDERS AND EVEN
THOSE GRANTED ASYLUM AS REFUGEES. IT’S A POLICY THAT PRE-DATES THE TRUMP
ADMINISTRATION AND APPLIES TO ANY LEGAL PERMANENT RESIDENT FROM JUST ABOUT ANY
COUNTRY. AFTER 9/11, THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION STEPPED UP ENFORCEMENT IN
RESPONSE TO TERRORISM CONCERNS, AND THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION CONTINUED THE
POLICY. NEWSHOUR WEEKEND SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT KIRA KAY WENT TO THE SOUTHEAST
ASIAN NATION OF CAMBODIA TO MEET A TIGHT-KNIT COMMUNITY OF DEPORTEES NOW FIGHTING
AGAINST THIS POLICY.
CREDITS:
Producer, Camera Editor:
Jason Maloney
Associate Producer: Tom
Ritzenthaler
Correspondent: Kira Kay
Field Producers:
Ben Dalton
Rebeca Corleto
Mathieu Faure
Ashley Lyles
Ayesha Shakya
Olga Slobodchikova
Tara Yarlagadda
KIRA KAY: When Chally
Dang was growing up in Philadelphia, he dreamed of playing professional
basketball.
CHALLY DANG: We’d just shoot hoops and dream of one day making it big in the
NBA. So it’s part of being American.
KIRA KAY: But America is just a
memory for Dang. He plays his Sunday pick-up game 9-thousand miles from
Philadelphia, in Phnom Penh, the Capital of Cambodia, where his parents were
born.
KIRA KAY: Dang is not here by
choice. He grew up in the U.S. as a legal permanent resident, a child of war
refugees. But in 2011, he was deported to a country he never knew.
CHALLY DANG: Everything was different, it was like a culture shock. The
environment is different, the people are different, the language is different.
KIRA KAY: His crime was firing a
gun in the air during a gang standoff when he was 15-years-old. He served five
years, and upon release, the government ordered him deported, but didn’t act on
it. He got a job and had five kids. But deportation orders never expire, and eight
years later, when Dang went for a routine immigration check-in, he was detained
and put on a plane to Cambodia. He says there’s a stigma to being a deportee.
CHALLY DANG: We are in our own category, because the Cambodian community look
at us as foreigners who decided to come back, and those that know we were
deported look at us like we are criminals that got rejected from another
country so why are we back in Cambodia?
KIRA KAY: Dang is one of 550
deportees from America now living in Cambodia. They began arriving in 2002,
when this country signed a repatriation agreement with the U.S. to accept green
card holders of Cambodian descent who had committed aggravated felonies
-- even nonviolent offenses that carried short sentences.
KIRA KAY: The “Cool Lounge,” a bar
run by deportees, is home away from home for these people who went to
American schools, listened to American music, ate American food.
KIRA KAY: Chandara Tep is from Modesto, California.
CHANDARA TEP: I grew up 4th of July, you know, fireworks,
BBQ, Spring breaks. I shed tears when 9/11 happened, because I felt like I was
American too.
KIRA KAY: Tep was deported six years ago, following his conviction for
assaulting a police officer. Sophea Phea and Bobby Orn also arrived
in 2011, Kalvin Heng, in 2004.
KIRA KAY: Heng and Phea weren’t born in Cambodia. Like
many deportees they were born in refugee camps in Thailand, after their
parents fled war and the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia in the 1970s
and killed two million people. The American bombing of Cambodia during its war
in Vietnam added to the chaos. The U.S. eventually granted asylum to
150-thousand Cambodian refugees between 1975 and 1994.
CHANDARA TEP: You come from a jungle to a concrete jungle. You are over here in
Cambodia, you know, you dodging bullets. Over there you’re living in the
project, you’re dodging muggers and robbers and thieves.
SOPHEA PHEA: In the states, being in bad neighborhoods, sometimes we make
mistakes, and sometimes we go on a wrong path, and not knowing what the bigger
consequences are.
KIRA KAY: These children of
refugees say they had no idea their brushes with the law made them vulnerable
to deportation. Kalvin Heng says he didn’t fight his
assault with a deadly weapon charge and accepted a one-year sentence, not
knowing that made him deportable.
KALVIN HENG: We weren’t informed about taking a plea bargain, or anything like
that. If we take a plea bargain we could be, you know we could face
deportation, and so on and so on. We didn’t know any of that until like now,
when we started doing our research.
KIRA KAY: American immigration
judges have no leeway to consider how potential deportees have rehabilitated
their lives. Tep had been out of prison for 13 years
when he was deported, leaving a wife and three kids behind.
CHANDARA TEP: We changed our lives. We had families, you know. We bought a home,
you know, we did all that stuff already, and then knock-knock, you know,
‘You’ve got to go, because you’re not a citizen.’
KIRA KAY: By the time they land in
Cambodia, deportees have been stripped of all American identification.
Cambodian immigration officials give them a single document with their name,
birth date, and photo. Their lives start over from scratch.
SOPHEA PHEA: I had no luggage. I had about $150 in my pocket. No possessions at
all.
CHANDARA TEP: Everything’s in Cambodian and you don’t even know how to write
your name in Cambodian.
KIRA KAY: Local officials wouldn’t
even recognize Heng’s immigration document. So he got
creative.
KALVIN HENG: My uncle had to play my dad. And then I had to be put into his
family book and use the identity of my cousin that passed away the year before
I came. So I was under a whole new identity for 12, 13 years.
KIRA KAY: What do you say to the comment that I’m sure you guys get a lot,
‘Tough luck, you guys had an opportunity in the states, you blew it?’
CHANDARA TEP: What I say? My answer’s always like this: yes, I messed up, I
confess to it, you know what I mean, but you are not seeing where we’re coming
from, You know, we’re refugees of the war and I lost my rights, of course,
because I’m not a citizen. But my kids has rights, my mom has rights, a
right to be a family member, a right to be with one another, you know what I
mean.
SOPHEA PHEA: I do believe that you do the crime you do the time, and you know for
most of us, or all of us, we’ve done our time.
BILL HEROD: These are not illegal immigrants. They didn’t sneak into the U.S.
KIRA KAY: American Bill Herod was
living in Cambodia when the deportees began arriving in 2002. He says back in
the U.S., officials had left refugees to fend for themselves.
BILL HEROD: Because of the failure of the refugee resettlement program, no
case officer came around and knocked on the door and said, ‘You need to fill
out these papers to get citizenship.’
KIRA KAY: Herod’s charity, the
“Returnee Integration Support Center,” or “RISC,” is staffed by deportees and
helps newcomers through the difficult adjustment.
BILL HEROD: They actually live here in this building if they don’t have any
place else to go, or we pay to put them in a guest house. And just help them
get on their feet. And then we find out what their interests are, what their
work experience is, and try to help them find jobs.
KIRA KAY: RISC has helped 50
American deportees train for and obtain jobs teaching English and keeps tabs on
them as they assimilate into Cambodian society. Despite many success stories,
some deportees succumb to drug use, mental health problems, and crime. Herod
lost an eye when grabbing drano out of the hands of a
despondent deportee.
BILL HEROD: And some don’t make it. We’ve had suicides. And it’s
heartbreaking when we realize that maybe if we’d made another field visit or
another phone call or taken him out for pizza one more time, we might have been
able to help them get across that blockage.
KIRA KAY: Deportees struggle with
whether or not to reveal their criminal records. Heng
works as an advertising manager at a local English-language newspaper and was
candid with his employer.
KALVIN HENG: I’ve made a mistake in the past. I’ve did my time for it. I’ve
rehabilitated. So please don’t look at what I’ve done in the past affect what I
can contribute. And they’ve been very good to me about it.
KIRA KAY: But Phea,
who was deported for credit card fraud, needed three years to open up to others
about her past.
SOPHEA PHEA: I was lonely. I was depressed, I kind of was lost.
KIRA KAY: She now teaches
Cambodian children in a Phnom Penh school, but she isn’t raising her own
13-year-old son, who remains in California with his father.
SOPHEA PHEA: I’m angry that this has fractured my relationship with my son. We
don’t have that communication anymore. I don’t know if he’s going to turn out
to be angry at me or just holding grudges against me or just feeling lonely
that I’m not there.
KIRA KAY: He visited her last year
for the first time. She hopes it won’t be the last.
SOPHEA PHEA: And he didn’t know how to call me ‘mom’ anymore, and that hurts.
KIRA KAY: In the U.S., deportee
families and Cambodian-American community leaders have lobbied American
officials for changes in immigration policy with few results. Last year, Kalvin
Heng had a realization.
KALVIN HENG: I just blurted it out, you know, ‘Let’s take it to the Cambodian
government.’
KIRA KAY: Heng recruited his deportee friends and formed a political action
group, “One Love Cambodia.” They are pushing to amend the repatriation
agreement from the Cambodian side. Most crucially, they want the Cambodian
Government to refuse to accept anyone who was once a refugee. To their
surprise, this group of ex-convicts was granted a meeting with high level
officials at Cambodia’s Interior Ministry.
SOPHEA PHEA: They sat there and listened to each of our stories and seeing what
we struggle here.
KALVIN HENG: No one had gone up to them and officially filed for a grievance
and, you know, really let them know that you know this is really really messing up our communities and our families across
the U.S.
KIRA KAY: Only days after that
meeting, the Cambodian Government sent a letter to the American Embassy,
requesting to amend the current repatriation agreement and “suspend temporarily
the implementation” until a new deal is struck. The U.S. rejected Cambodia’s
request to suspend deportations and has sometimes withheld visas and economic
aid from countries that refuse to accept deportees. U.S. Officials have
agreed to a first discussion with Cambodia, expected to take place soon.
KIRA KAY: Just 10 days ago, Cambodia's Prime Minister publicly demanded to
renegotiate the agreement, calling the deportations “a sad separation” of families.
CHANDARA TEP: Nobody ever stepped up to them and told them. ‘This is what’s
happening…’
KIRA KAY: The “One Love Cambodia”
team is assisting the Cambodian Government in preparation for the talks -- talks they hope will yield changes that might come too late
for them, but could stop others from following in their footsteps.
###
|
TIMECODE |
LOWER
THIRD |
1 |
1:15 |
CHALLY DANG U.S. DEPORTEE |
2 |
1:59 |
CHANDARA TEP U.S. DEPORTEE |
3 |
2:59 |
SOPHEA PHEA U.S. DEPORTEE |
4 |
3:28 |
KALVIN HENG U.S. DEPORTEE |
5 |
4:16 |
SOPHEA PHEA U.S. DEPORTEE |
6 |
5:39 |
BILL HEROD RETURNEE INTEGRATION SUPPORT CENTER |
7 |
7:56 |
SOPHEA PHEA U.S. DEPORTEE |