[L]ast Friday, Thao Vo got the word from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement: 20 years after moving from Vietnam to Vermont as a child, he was being deported.
He was told he could bring one carry-on size piece of luggage weighing no more than 45 pounds and his credit and debit cards. As of last Friday, he had 60 days left in the United States.
Vo is not alone. According to observers, the number of deportations to southeast Asian countries has seen a marked uptick over several years as the Trump administration has pursued a more aggressive stance towards people from countries including Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
The Trump administration’s shift in policy was underscored Wednesday when the Atlantic reported that officials have resumed efforts to reverse a longstanding policy protecting some Vietnamese immigrants from deportation. That policy protects immigrants from Vietnam who arrived in the United States before diplomatic relations were normalized in 1995 from being deported.
Vo does not fall within the category of immigrants from Vietnam who are protected, for now, from deportation.
Vo was 6 years old when he landed at Los Angeles International Airport on Sept. 27, 1999. His family was on their way to Vermont. They moved to Winooski under the American Homecoming Act, a policy that granted preferential immigration status to Vietnamese people fathered by American soldiers, as Vo’s mother was. Growing up in Winooski wasn’t always easy, Vo said, but he found his place on the sports field, including track and football.
But then he ran into trouble.
As an adult, Vo has twice run into uncertainty about his immigration status. On two occasions, he has faced criminal penalties related to marijuana — a conviction that put him at risk of losing his permanent resident status.
For the first, a 2013 felony marijuana possession charge in Illinois, he served a year and a half in prison. When he was released, he was immediately picked up by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and detained for three months as a case about his removal was pending, he said. But ultimately the case was dismissed and his green card was reinstated.
In 2016, then in Vermont, Vo again was arrested carrying cannabis. At that time, assured by his lawyer that he wouldn’t face immigration repercussions, he pleaded guilty to a state charge of possession of more than one ounce of marijuana and less than two ounces, a deal that involved no prison time.
Vo thought the case was over, he recalled this week. But one and a half years later, he was driving when an ICE agent in an unmarked car pulled him over, citing him for an immigration law violation because of that conviction in Vermont, Vo said. People with green cards who are convicted of drug offense beyond a single offense involving more than 30 grams of marijuana, or about an ounce, are subject to deportation, under U.S. law.
Vo was detained and held in a prison in Dover, New Hampshire, for more than six months. He was released in late March, and has remained under ICE supervision since.
Though he knew there was still a removal order in place, Vo understood his case was at a standstill. Vietnam hadn’t processed the papers for his deportation to be complete.
He was in a period of limbo. He didn’t have a green card, meaning that he did not have a right to work, but he was exploring the options to get that reinstated. He became the primary caregiver for his fiancée’s 6- and 10-year-old daughters. They call him “pops.”
Then, last week, he got word that ICE had secured his paperwork. According to a letter he received from ICE, he is scheduled to leave the country on Feb. 7.
“Once I got this letter, it really hit me in my teeth really hard,” Vo said.
Vo said he has worked hard to improve his life.
“The one time I clear up my act and be a family man, I have to deal with all of this,” he said.
“I never blame anybody for what I’ve done. I own up to it.”
He worries about the impact his deportation will have on his family. “I just don’t want to see them struggling.”
In a statement, ICE spokesperson John Mohan said that Vo violated “the terms of his admission due to a criminal conviction.” He confirmed the timeline of Vo’s immigration arrest, and said he has remained under the department’s custody while ICE finalized arrangements for his removal since, Mohan said.
Vo’s deportation case, stemming from a criminal conviction, is not unique. But, it comes amid a wave of immigration cases against immigrants from Southeast Asian countries.
There has been an apparent push under the Trump administration to pursue deportation cases involving immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos over the last few years, according to Quyen Dinh, executive director of Southeast Asia Resource Action Center.
More than 16,000 individuals from those three countries have pending deportation orders, according to Dinh. Many of them are related to criminal convictions from those people’s youth, for which they served time long ago.
“What we see a lot is that these are crimes that were convicted when folks were very young, growing up as teenagers, as refugees here in the U.S. with very little support from both their families and also schools and the community at large,” she said.
Before 2016, Vietnam accepted an average of 32 individuals for deportation every year. In 2017, that figure nearly doubled to 71, according to Dinh.
Quyen attributes the increase to a strategy by the Trump administration to remove prosecutorial discretion in immigration cases, as well as to apply more pressure to other countries to accept people who are being deported.
For instance, the Trump administration is now trying to renegotiate a longstanding agreement that Vietnam would not accept any individuals who emigrated to the United States before 1995, the year diplomatic relations between the two countries were normalized. The administration had abandoned its efforts in August, but has resumed the efforts, according to reports.
The move has drawn sharp criticism from many, including members of Vermont’s delegation.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said he has “serious concerns” about the Trump administration’s reported efforts to deport immigrants to Vietnam, including those who fled during the Vietnam War. He said that efforts should be focused not on those who committed minor offenses in the past, but on people who “pose a threat to public safety.”
“The constant hateful, racist, xenophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies coming out of the White House only serves to divide us as a nation,” Sanders said. “It is time for Congress to do what the American people overwhelmingly want us to do: abolish the cruel and dysfunctional immigration system that we have today and pass comprehensive immigration reform.”
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who worked on efforts to normalize relations between the U.S. and Vietnam, also criticized the administration’s attempts to deport Vietnamese immigrants who arrived before 1995. Those who committed crimes should be “held accountable,” he said, but returning them to Vietnam is “both cruel and immoral.”
“They supported the United States during the war and fled Vietnam with only the clothes on their backs after the U.S. military left. Now they are being sent back to a country with a communist government led by former military officers who fought for the North,” he said.
While some people may have immigrated to the United States under a program that offered them preferential status, they would not be automatically on track for naturalization. That process is labor intensive and difficult to navigate, particularly when there is a language barrier. Consequently, many people live in the United States as permanent residents, a status that has different protections than full citizenship.
Vo said that his family members had considered working towards naturalization, but he said the language barrier made it difficult. In his case, he always struggled with standardized testing, and knew the process would be expensive. After his first arrest, he didn’t know if he could apply anymore.
“I always wanted citizenship,” he said. “But I didn’t know I was eligible for citizenship.”
The increasingly aggressive policy towards immigrants from Southeast Asia and the shifting policies about who is eligible for deportation has left many individuals and families in the community struggling with uncertainty and managing family separations, Dinh said.
Desiree Mora, Vo’s fiancée, grew up in Winooski with Vo. Her two daughters have some of the same elementary school teachers that Vo did when he was growing up, she said.
“When I’m looking at my 6-year-old, it’s really hard for me to picture, like, taking her to a foreign country and having her grow up there and then just be ripped back,” she said.
Mora is frustrated that Vo is facing deportation when he has made efforts to improve his life, to have a job, and became a stable part of a family.
“Now they’re saying like you have to go home, and that’s not his home. At all,” she said.
Vo, who has lived most of his life in the United States, has few connections to the country he left as a young child. Most of his family moved to Vermont with him and his mother. His paternal grandmother, his last remaining relative in Vietnam, passed away a few years ago. Vo doesn’t speak Vietnamese.
Now, Vo is working with an immigration attorney to see what options he has. He is selling off his possessions to try to raise money to cover the cost, and a friend set up a GoFundMe page for him.
Since adult possession of up to one ounce of marijuana has been legalized since his arrest in 2016, Vo is also looking at the possibility of having his record expunged.
In the meantime, he feels lost.
“I don’t know what to do,” Vo said. “I don’t know who to talk to.”
