Following reports that President Donald Trump’s administration is once again revisiting protections for Vietnamese immigrants, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell says the city stands in solidarity with its large Vietnamese population, including immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for decades.

“In the face of this ugly effort to target our Vietnamese neighbors — I would like to make it clear that the entire City of New Orleans stands in solidarity with our Vietnamese community, which has contributed so much to our social and cultural fabric,” Cantrell said. “I would also strongly encourage all naturalized residents who are eligible to apply for citizenship, to do so now.”

According to The Atlantic, the Trump administration is reneging on agreements that have allowed long-term U.S. residents from Vietnam, Cambodia and other counties who arrived in the country before diplomatic ties between the U.S. and Vietnam were established in 1995, decades after the Vietnam War and the immigration of thousands of Vietnamese refugees to cities across the U.S.

Last year, Trump’s administration threatened to reverse course on that agreement, threatening to deport people with criminal convictions who arrived in the U.S. before 1995.

According to The Atlantic, a spokesperson from the administration said that the bilateral agreement “establishes procedures for deporting Vietnamese citizens who arrived in the United States after July 12, 1995, and are subject to final orders of removal.”

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“While the procedures associated with this specific agreement do not apply to Vietnamese citizens who arrived in the United States before July 12, 1995, it does not explicitly preclude the removal of pre-1995 cases,” the statement said.

More than 1.2 million people, many left stateless after the dissolve of South Vietnam, fled to the U.S. in the mid- and late-1970s; with the many Vietnamese immigrants settled in New Orleans, concentrating in New Orleans East and on the West Bank. Those residents include current District E Councilmember Cyndi Nguyen, the City Council’s first-ever Vietnamese member, who was elected in 2017.

“I am very disappointed with the direction of the Trump Administration on immigration laws,” Nguyen said in a statement. “Our country is made of immigrants of every ethnicity. I want to encourage the administration to carefully evaluate the immigration policy and focus on the people. It should be a fair policy that the United States can sustain.”

In September, Cantrell partnered with VAYLA (or Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association of New Orleans), a multi-racial progressive New Orleans East-based community group, for a Citizenship Day campaign encouraging residents to begin the naturalization process.

Cities for Citizenship includes a network of more than 70 U.S. cities and counties encouraging and facilitating the naturalization process for immigrant and refugee populations.

Trump’s reversed mandate does not target naturalized Vietnamese immigrants. Naturalized citizens also are able to vote, obtain a U.S. passport, and, crucially, sponsor family members through their naturalization process.

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But there are significant barriers to naturalization, including costs — the the fee rose from $60 in 1989 ($120 in 2017 dollars) to $725 in 2017, according to a report from Stanford University's Immigration Policy Lab.

Meanwhile, according to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency identified 8,600 Vietnamese nationals in the U.S. who are subject to deportation and “7,821 have criminal convictions,” as reported by Reuters in 2017.

“This is not new,” VAYLA founder and director Minh Nguyen told Gambit in September in advance of Citizenship Day. “Trump got into office, he ran on that campaign, and he’s unfortunately doing it.”