In 2014 and 2015, it was estimated that there were between 1.4 million and 1.7 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. from Asia, making up around 14 percent of all undocumented immigrants. It is probably safe to assume that these figures have since grown.

Recently, Cambodian and Vietnamese communities have been the targets of large-scale immigration raids that have resulted in some of the highest numbers of arrests that these communities have ever seen. The Trump administration, in retaliation for their refusal to accept deportees from the United States, has levied a visa sanction against Myanmar and Laos.

But it is not just undocumented immigrants who are being deported. It’s happening to legal residents, too. The passage of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, in 1996, expanded the list of offenses that warranted deportations of legal residents and refugees, including nonviolent crimes such as marijuana possession.

In 2015, NBC wrote an article covering the plight of Southeast Asian immigrants caught up in the deportation pipeline. Bill Hing, professor of law at the University of San Francisco and founder of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, compared America’s deportation policies to those in Europe, and points out the inhumanity of ours:

Refugees facing deportation in Europe have extra protections because they must be tried inside their country of residence and also in the European Court of Human Rights, Hing said. According to U.S. law, refugees must apply to change their status to ‘legal permanent resident’ after residing in the country for one year — a practice that the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees has criticized as violating international law. The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees prohibit a host country from returning a refugee to the country from which the person fled. A host country is permitted to expel a person if he or she is found guilty of a ‘capital crime’ or ‘a very grave punishable act’ and determined to be a danger to society, but stipulates that ‘conviction alone cannot imply that the refugee poses a threat.’

Korean adoptees have also been targets of deportation, as many were not given citizenship when they arrived as children. The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 granted adoptees automatic citizenship, but it didn’t offer retroactive citizenship for children who arrived before 2000, meaning those adoptees were stuck in limbo. As they grew up, some found themselves arrested for petty offenses and deported to countries where they had no social connections and did not know the language. This has led to tragic consequences, such as the death of Philip Clay, a deportee who committed suicide after months of isolation and homelessness in South Korea.

Photo by Jerry Kiesewetter on Unsplash

Most of all, we cannot forget about the infamous travel ban that currently bars nationals arriving from a number of Muslim-majority countries as well as North Korea and Venezuela. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that “a reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus.”

Our country’s treatment of immigrants is appalling, and always has been. Recent developments involving the detention of migrants at the southern border, as well as the cruel practice of separating migrant children from their parents, have made me sick to my stomach. As a child of refugees, I wake up every day knowing the sacrifice my parents, and many others in my community, made to be in this country. No parent would place their child in a boat set to cross violent seas or lead their child through a blistering desert motivated by anything other than pure desperation and love for that child.