Advocates from nine different organizations across the U.S. launched a joint campaign this week demanding President Joe Biden pardon Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian refugees from the Vietnam War at risk of being immediately deported by the incoming Trump administration. The bid seeks to benefit some 15,000 refugees with a final order of removal from the U.S. due to decades-old criminal convictions. 

These refugees—who fled from violence, genocide, mass carpet bombings, and persecution as a consequence of the U.S. military intervention in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s—were resettled into heavily disinvested communities with limited access to resources and support. That led many to criminal convictions and incarceration.

On Thursday, Biden announced commutations of sentences for nearly 1,500 people as well as 39 pardons, the largest granting of clemency in a single day by a U.S. president in modern history, according to a press release. The commutations were granted to people placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic while the pardons concerned nonviolent crimes, including drug offenses. 

Quyȇn Đinh, executive director at the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, said that while her organization celebrated this historic moment, many more individuals were “still waiting for their second chance, like the 15,000 Southeast Asian Americans with deportation orders eager for the day they can live without fear of being separated from their families and communities.”

Biden’s announcement, however, did not mention any clemency for immigrants specifically.

Van Sam, community defense program manager at VietLead, a nonprofit serving the Southeast Asian communities in Philadelphia and South Jersey, said the new push for clemency specifically for Southeast Asian refugees is a way to hold the U.S. political establishment, and particularly Biden, accountable not only for the U.S. military intervention but also for the following criminalization of resettled Southeast Asian refugees.

As a senator, Biden voted in favor of the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975, which allowed the largest-ever refugee resettlement in U.S. history. He also sponsored the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which preceded the era of mass incarceration and criminalization of racialized individuals in the U.S. 

“So we are asking Biden: Can you take responsibility for the fact that our people are now being separated from our families once again?” Sam said. 

The Southeast Asian Refugee Relief and Responsibility (SEARR) Campaign demands Biden grant clemency to Southeast Asians with federal-level convictions. That would open up the pathway for final removal orders to be vacated, said Socheatta Meng, the executive director at Mekong NYC, a social justice organization advocating for the Southeast Asian communities in New York. 

About 1.19 million noncitizens have “final orders of removal,” which are decisions issued by an immigration judge that the individual did not or could not appeal. Still, many noncitizens with a final order of removal can remain in the country if they are provided “deferred action,” a form of executive clemency that depends on the discretion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  

Many Southeast Asian refugees are now U.S. citizens, as they can obtain permanent residency (a green card) and then apply for citizenship after five years. However, not every refugee knew or had the resources or legal help to apply for residency and later for citizenship, said Kevin Lam, the co-executive director at the Asian American Resource Workshop. 

“And lots of folks just never naturalized or got their citizenship because of language barriers and lack of access to resources,” he said. So, despite years of living in the U.S. as a refugee or a permanent resident, any noncitizen can still be deported. 

That is the reason why “it’s really urgent that President Biden take action,” Meng said, “as a cycle of violence, displacement, and family separation threatens to be very real for our community.” 

Democratic Congresswomen Judy Chu, Pramila Jayapal, Zoe Lofgren, and Ayanna Pressley last year introduced a bill that would end deportations of Southeast Asian refugees and establish a pathway back to the U.S. for the more than 2,000 already deported to Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The bill fizzled out in the Republican-dominated House of Representatives. 

Now, advocates argue that Biden should show the same level of compassion as he showed for his son, Hunter Biden, who faced sentencing for two criminal cases. On Dec. 1, Biden issued a “full and unconditional pardon” to clear any offense off the younger Biden. Unlike Hunter Biden, Southeast Asian refugees have already served sentences, so removing them from the only country they have known as adults to another they no longer remember would be harsh double punishment, advocates say.

Take the case of Lan Le, a 53-year-old single mother who resettled in the U.S. at 8 years old and now has nine children and four grandchildren. In a hostile environment, with both her parents working, Le became like a mother to her younger siblings. 

“It was so, so hard for us to adjust,” she told Prism. “We didn’t speak the language and didn’t know anything.” 

As a teenager living in Dorchester, a heavily policed Boston community with disinvested schools and little to no mental health resources at the time, Le got entangled with the criminal justice system and was incarcerated from 1997 to 1999. 

As a community organizer, Le has helped other refugees across Greater Boston to access social services through the Asian American Resource Workshop (AARW). Now, facing the risk of deportation, Le is asking for a pardon that would release her from a life in limbo, constantly fearing detention. 

As refugees with a final order of removal, Le explained, “they only give us one-year work permits.” The permits, which cost around $500, can take six months or more to be issued. So by the time it arrives, she said, refugees need to find a job where they effectively use the permit for one or two months. 

“Living like this is just not fair,” she said.  

Mass deportation threat 

The SEARR campaign concurs with other efforts asking Biden to shield some of the most vulnerable immigrants from deportation, such as extending the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for people from countries in crisis around the world and protecting Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients by expediting renewals and facilitating H-1B visas. The requests reflect the sense of urgency within immigrant communities as President-elect Trump is scheduled to take office on Jan. 20. 

As Trump has vowed to carry out the “largest deportation operation in American history,” his appointed “border czar,” Tom Homan, has stated the administration’s intent to first deport people with final orders of removal. Trump did it during his first term when his administration deported some 1.5 million people. Southeast Asian nationals were heavily targeted. 

In the first two years of Trump’s first term, the removals of Cambodians increased by 279%, while Vietnamese removals rose by 58%. The deportation of Vietnamese violated a memorandum of understanding agreed to in 2008 by President George W. Bush to exempt from deportation those who entered the country before July 1995, when the U.S. and Vietnam reestablished diplomatic relations. 

“We have seen cases of folks still being targeted, regardless of what the agreement has said,” Lam said. Although at a slower pace, the removal of Southeast Asian refugees continued during the Biden administration, revealing the profound legacy of violence against the Southeast Asian communities, Lam said. 

Deportations negate the historical responsibility of the U.S. to Vietnam, where more than 3 million people, mostly civilians, were killed during the war. Laos was turned into the most heavily bombed country in history. In Cambodia, U.S. planes dropped more than 2.7 million tons of bombs, contributing to the rise of the Khmer Rouge regime, which in four years killed more than 1.7 million civilians. For many of the refugees fleeing these horrors, said Kham Moua, national deputy director at the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, “the pardon requests are really the last avenue for relief.” 

Ultimately, Biden would also be responsible for the Southeast Asian refugees deported by the Trump administration. As a senator, Biden supported the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996, which radically expanded the crimes that made an immigrant eligible for deportation, including a host of nonviolent crimes, such as possession of any amount of an illicit drug or acts of “moral turpitude” such as theft, fraud, and dishonesty. 

Today, even a legal resident (green card holder) could be deported based on a decades-old conviction. Consider the case of Pheng Seng, whose family escaped the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia and resettled in the U.S. when he was four months old. 

“The government just dropped us off into a community with overcrowded schools, hatred, and racism, where I was constantly bullied,” Seng said in an interview with Prism. 

At 22 years old, with mental health problems and a substance use disorder, Seng got entangled in the criminal justice system. “I fell into the school-to-prison-to-deportation pipeline,” he said. 

Now, 44-year-old Seng is an entrepreneur who launched a printing business with partners in Philadelphia, where he has lived for more than 30 years. He is asking for “a second chance” for him and for thousands of Southeast Asian refugees like him. 

“I’m trying to help a whole bunch of folks who are scared and traumatized,” Seng said. “That’s why I’m speaking up.”