Vietnamese refugees in Houston plead for extension of deportation protection

Le Ba Hoang offers prayers in front of the Vietnam Memorial before a rally held by HAAPI Youth and community partners Saturday, Jan. 12, 2019, in Houston. The rally was held in light of the United States Administration's heightened attacks to deport impacted Vietnamese and Southeast Asian communities and renegotiating the 2008 United States - Vietnam Repatriation Agreement?. less Le Ba Hoang offers prayers in front of the Vietnam Memorial before a rally held by HAAPI Youth and community partners Saturday, Jan. 12, 2019, in Houston. The rally was held in light of the United States ... more Photo: Steve Gonzales, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Photo: Steve Gonzales, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer Image 1 of / 21 Caption Close Vietnamese refugees in Houston plead for extension of deportation protection 1 / 21 Back to Gallery

The sun sliced the statue at an angle, highlighting the serious faces of the two men weighed down by military garb and rifles. In the shadow rests a plaque etched with people — Vietnamese refugees — in boats, the brass depicting a tone of somberness and fear that is carried over by the immigrants gathered nearby on Saturday morning.

“Every day, when I wake up and think about being deported back to Vietnam and separated from my family, that tears my heart,” Robert Huynh’s voice cracked.

He quickly wiped tears from his eyes as he stood in front of the Vietnam Memorial in southwest Houston Saturday morning. Dozens of people stood beside him to urge the U.S. government to renew the 2008 repatriation agreement between the U.S. and Vietnam, which protects certain Vietnamese refugees from deportation.

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The memorandum of understanding, which is set to renew on Jan. 22, bars the deportation of Vietnamese immigrants with final removal orders who arrived in the U.S. prior to July 12, 1995 — the date the previously warring countries re-established diplomatic relations. But the Vietnamese community and immigration lawyers and advocates have been on high alert after the two governments reportedly met last month to discuss dissolving the agreement.

If Vietnam caves to pressure from the U.S. to back out of the agreement, an estimated 9,000 Vietnamese immigrants nationwide — and roughly 1,500 in Texas — would be subject to deportation by the end of January.

The move, immigration advocates and lawyers say, would be a devastating and unfair blow to a vulnerable population. Many came to the United States to flee the Vietnam War only to be placed in struggling neighborhoods with little or no resources. As a result, some may have looked to gangs for support they couldn’t find in their homes, schools and communities.

Tung Nguyen was one of those people.

He was a teenager when he arrived in California as a refugee of the Vietnam War. He didn’t speak English, he didn’t know the culture, and for that, he was frequently bullied.

“I didn’t know how to function, I made a mistake as a youngster and I had to pay for that with 18 years in prison,” he said.

He was 16 and a non-citizen when he was sent to prison, which resulted in him receiving a final order of removal. But Nguyen changed his life, becoming an advocate and mentor for other incarcerated men when he was released.

“I didn’t know that what I did as a dumb and stupid kid was going to affect me and send me back to a country I don’t even know anymore,” he said. “Yes, I was a criminal 30-something years ago. Today, I’m a community member like everybody else.”

Advocates said the agreements has been tremendously important in providing humanitarian relief and protection for Vietnamese refugee.

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The government considers a criminal act by a noncitizen problematic in and of itself, thanks to major immigration law reforms passed in 1996. Those reforms “expanded the definition of what is considered a felony by so many criteria, that even small crimes that are misdemeanors can be classified as aggravated felonies,” Quyen Dinh, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Southeast Asian Resource Action Center, told the Chronicle last month.

Those who entered the country illegally prior to 1995, or who overstayed temporary visas would also potentially be affected by the policy change, said Khanh Pham, attorney for the refugee and asylum advocacy group Boat People SOS.

State Reps. Gene Wu and Al Green attended the rally, and both said that attempting to dissolve the 2008 agreement is one of many moves in the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy on immigration.

“This is an ongoing smear against the immigrant community, against the refugee community, against anyone who’s not white,” Wu said. “Look around this city and see how rich we have made the state of Texas, how rich we have made Houston.”

Wu added that many of the refugees who would be affected by the agreement were “refugees for a reason — many of them fought with us against the Vietnamese government in the war.”

“We are here because the U.S. was over there,” Nguyen said.