VNExpress-Dec 2
People of Vietnamese origin who are undocumented or have criminal records face the risk of deportation once Donald Trump becomes the U.S. President, lawyers warn. Throughout his election campaign, Trump criticized illegal immigrants, referring to them regularly as “criminals.” He has chosen former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Thomas Homan, known for his tough stance on immigration, to oversee border control in his second administration. The Vietnamese community is expected to be impacted by the new policies, Le Thanh Mai, a U.S. lawyer of Vietnamese heritage based in Michigan, said. “Policies to deport undocumented immigrants and immigrants with criminal records may reappear in Trump’s new term.”
About 2.3 million people of Vietnamese origin live in the U.S., making them the fourth largest Asian community in the country behind Chinese, Indians and Filipinos, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In his first term as president, Trump had adopted policies to tighten immigration, with the ICE having handed deportation orders on around 10,000 Vietnamese across the U.S., most of them with criminal records and yet to gain citizenship. It arrested over 100 Vietnamese immigrants with criminal records, detaining them for months as they waited for deportation. The arrest was done despite the fact that Vietnam and the U.S. had signed an agreement in 2008 that states that Vietnamese who arrived before July 12, 1995, when the two countries reinstated diplomatic relations, would not face deportation. The 10,000 Vietnamese who received deportation orders included 8,000 who arrived in the U.S. before 1995. The Vietnamese community denounced the deportation plan, calling it “unfair and cruel.” “Many Vietnamese came to the U.S. when they were young and tried to integrate amid difficulties and lack of support, and so some of them made mistakes,” Tania Pham, an immigration lawyer who helped 40 Vietnamese who were detained. “But many of them have turned their lives around, living honorably, and should not be separated from their families and jobs.” After facing a public backlash, the administration decided not to go ahead with the deportation plan. But an emboldened Trump in his second term could hasten deportation plans before he is met with opposition, Pham added. Read more at:
