A group of Cambodian refugees in the Bay Area received summonses to show up to ICE in San Francisco this week, where they’ll be detained and likely deported as part of a push by the Trump administration targeting immigrants with criminal records.

At least eight local Cambodians were asked to report to deportation officers at ICE headquarters on Sansome Street on Wednesday, and dozens more are expected to be detained across the United States this month, according to local advocates.

It’s the latest round of these deportations, as ICE cracks down on Cambodian refugees who committed crimes years or even decades ago, often as teenagers, that cost them their green cards and put them on a track to deportation.

Many of these immigrants tell similar stories: haunted by the trauma of war and genocide, they landed in impoverished neighborhoods in America where opportunities were limited and where they were bullied for being immigrants. They turned to drugs, gangs and crime to fit in, decisions that got them locked up for years and cost them their visas.

Their crimes were big and small. Some were charged with driving under the influence, others with murder. But as rehabilitated men with full-time jobs and families, they acknowledge their faults and say they deserve another chance, immigration attorneys say. Their predicament highlights the complexities of the immigration system, raising the question: Do they deserve to stay?

Hay Hov, 39, of Oakland, has checked in regularly with ICE for more than a decade. But on his son’s fourth birthday Feb. 19, Hov got a notice requiring him to report to ICE at 8 a.m. Wednesday. He could be deported to a country he hasn’t set foot in since he was a baby.

“I did my time,” said Hov, a truck driver who served a five-year sentence in Soledad state prison after being convicted in 2001 of shooting a man. “It’s a choice I made when I was young, and now I’m paying for it. But it shouldn’t be like this.”

In the past, immigrants in this situation have been allowed to stay in the United States, but the Trump administration has been pressing Cambodia and a handful of other uncooperative countries — among them Vietnam, China and Iran — to take back their deportees.

ICE has said every country has a legal obligation to accept the return of its citizens when they are removed from other countries. Federal law allows immigrants slated for deportation to present their case before an immigration judge, the agency said.

A spokesman declined to comment specifically on the potential deportations of dozens of Cambodians this month.

There were 1,855 Cambodian nationals with a final removal order living in the U.S. as of September, according to ICE. Of those, 1,362 were convicted criminals.

“It’s a very difficult landscape because on the one hand, they have paid their debt to society,” said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., who led the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service under the Clinton administration from 1993-2000.

“But they’re not U.S. citizens, so they don’t have the protection of citizens. The immigration laws are very clear on these issues, that people convicted of certain crimes are subject to deportation.”

Others say it’s an obvious and necessary punishment for people who immigrate to the U.S. and commit crimes.

“This is the consequence of violating their terms in the U.S.,” said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group whose goal is to stop illegal immigration. “In every circumstance we hold the people who violate the laws and put their families in this situation in the first place to be held accountable.”

Advocates say it’s the latest in a series of raids that ICE has orchestrated against Cambodians in particular. But this time they had warning. A U.S. district judge in January issued a temporary restraining order through May that requires ICE to give at least two weeks’ written notice to anyone slated for deportation.

“This is the first time they’ve been this explicit,” said Kevin Lo, an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco who is representing Hov. “We immediately started working with people to see what their legal options are. We identified very quickly people who didn’t have valid removal orders.”

Lo is seeking to have Hov’s deportation delayed, arguing that a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the federal definition of a “crime of violence” puts him outside ICE’s reach for deportation.

Hov has also asked Gov. Gavin Newson to pardon his crime, which may eventually allow him to stay in the U.S.

Cambodia in 2002 signed a repatriation agreement with the United States that allowed for a certain number of Cambodian immigrants to be deported each year, though the country refused to take them back. But Trump in 2017 imposed visa sanctions on Cambodia, and Phnom Penh began taking in Cambodian nationals in even larger numbers than before.

ICE deported 110 Cambodians in fiscal 2018, compared with 29 in fiscal 2017, according to data provided by the agency.

“This Cambodian situation is particularly compelling because many of these people came as young people and they really have no connection at all to the country,” said Meissner.

The vast majority of Cambodians targeted for deportation fled genocide by the Khmer Rouge regime with their families when they were small children. They fled to refugee camps in neighboring countries before journeying west, where they received green cards.

Hov and his family fled to refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines before escaping to the U.S. in 1985. He’s never left Oakland.

He recounted a troubled upbringing in poor neighborhoods throughout Oakland, punctuated by frequent fights and school suspensions that escalated into burglaries as a teenager and eventually, prison time.

In September 2001, Hov was convicted of shooting an older Cambodian man with whom he’d argued publicly a few months earlier. Hov and Lo contend that Hov was 19 at the time, had been home that night and only hinted that he may have been involved in order to impress his friends at the time. Hov also has a 2012 DUI conviction.

His wife, Catherine Depooter-Hov, 28, said it would be impossible to visit Hov if he’s deported to Cambodia. The couple’s son, Robbie, who is severely autistic, often harms himself unintentionally and requires round-the-clock intensive care, said DePooter-Hov.

“It’s extremely hard, but it’s something that we can handle,” she said. “But if my husband is taken out of the picture, all of that would change.”

DePooter-Hov stays home to care for their son but would have to get a full-time job if Hov is deported.

“My husband is such a good person and a good provider for our family,” she said. “I really don’t want our family to be broken apart, as does anyone. Nobody deserves this.”

Tatiana Sanchez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tatiana.sanchez@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TatianaYSanchez