Trump admin again targeting Vietnamese immigrants for deportation, some here for decades now
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The Trump administration has taken a death-by-1,000 cuts approach to its mission to deport as many immigrants as possible, chief among them ending Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Both actions cruelly targetTrump admin again targeting Vietnamese immigrants for deportation, some here for decades now
The Trump administration has taken a death-by-1,000 cuts approach to its mission to deport as many immigrants as possible, chief among them ending Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Both actions cruelly target immigrants who have settled roots here for years, some for decades. Another cut begins: “The Trump administration is resuming its efforts to deport certain protected Vietnamese immigrants who have lived in the United States for decades—many of them having fled the country during the Vietnam War,” The Atlantic reports: The administration last year began pursuing the deportation of many long-term immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia, and other countries who the administration alleges are “violent criminal aliens.” But Washington and Hanoi have a unique 2008 agreement that specifically bars the deportation of Vietnamese people who arrived in the United States before July 12, 1995—the date the two former foes reestablished diplomatic relations following the Vietnam War. “My family fled Communist Vietnam when I was a baby because they would have rather died in search of light than to have lived in darkness,” Rep. Stephanie Murphy, the first Vietnamese-American to serve in Congress, tweeted. “As an American, I’m deeply concerned by POTUS’ attempts to renegotiate the 2008 MOU between Vietnam and the U.S., which would potentially deport Vietnamese refugees who arrived in the U.S. before 1995.” Thousands could now be vulnerable to deportation and uprooted from families, homes, jobs, and communities to a nation that hasn’t been familiar to them for decades. The administration initially began targeting these immigrants last year, eventually leading the “outraged” U.S. ambassador to Vietnam to resign from the State Department. Ted Osius “characterized the deportation effort as a broken promise to South Vietnamese families who had been allies of the United States during the war and would not be safe in Vietnam,” the New York Times reported. “Forty-three years ago,” said Kevin Lam of the Asian American Resource Workshop, “a lot of the Southeast Asian communities and Vietnamese communities fled their countries and their homeland due to the war, which the U.S. was involved in, fleeing for their safety and the safety of their families. The U.S. would do well to remember that.” Read more