Lowell (United States), 16/08/2008. On the occasion of the Water Festival, campaigners of the association “Deported Diaspora” inform and raise awareness among visitors on the problem of deportations
© Stéphane Janin Lowell (state of Massachusetts), Tuesday, August 5th, 2008, 7.30pm – Somebody knocks on Chanthan's door. Chanthan, a 32 year-old Cambodian-American, was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and arrived in the United States in 1979 just aged 3. A plainclothes police officer, devoid of any search warrant, is asking to come in to see the young woman's brother, Chanthon, older by two years. “Don't worry, we are not here to arrest him...” Chanthan is hesitant. She eventually pretends her brother is not there. But what she is unaware of is that the whole neighbourhood has already been cordoned off by officers of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Ten minutes later, a handcuffed Chanthon leaves the house. He was later sent to the detention centre of Otero County, situated south of New Mexico, near the Texas border., in other words some 2,500 miles away from his home. And he is far from being the only one in that situation. Indeed, 15 Cambodians from Lowell were arrested the same evening, as part of a raid organised by the police in Lowell. They all face deportation to Cambodia at some point. Cambodia, a country which most of them left more than 25 years ago, a country they don't know, so to speak.
“An absurd system”
So what did Chanthon do to end up listed among the people that the government wants to evict from the country? According to his sister, “not much”. She opens up on the story: “Twelve years ago, my brother went to visit relatives in Rhode Island. Whilst he was there, ho got acquainted with some bad Cambodian-American people. And one day, the police picked them all up, including my brother. The cops didn't have any reasons for keeping him: he had committed no crime, stolen nothing, and he had no drugs, no weapons. Still, he spent two weeks in prison, was released and the case was closed. But he is an immigrant, who never applied for the American citizenship and hasn't taken much care of his status and documents all the time he has been here...”
Since then, Chanthon has been leading a quiet life, enjoying a secure job and the custody of his two little boys, obtained after the divorce from his wife. “He is the one who earns the money that's needed to look after the boys! The system and the administration don't care about that at all; it's crazy and not humane. Sending him to a prison in New Mexico and threatening him with deportation is absurd!”, the young woman said, staggered.
Dimple Rana's campaign for the cause of the “deported”
Chanthon's story is one out of many similar ones in the United States. Defending these “deportees” is one of Rana's strong beliefs. She founded the association “Deported Diaspora” in March 2008 with three friends of hers. The group is composed of young community campaigners who are determined to prevent the enforcement of deportations by fighting against the procedures in operation for the “removal” and eviction of immigrants towards their country of origin.
Dimple Rana was born on the American territory and is of Indian descent. She grew up within the Cambodian community of Revere, in the suburbs of Boston, 30 miles from Lowell. She recalls: “At the age of eleven, I became a founding member of a Cambodian American gang. I joined to retaliate against injuries caused by racism and poverty. Initially the gang helped me to confront injustice in my community, but four years later, I realised gangs were not the right response. After my university years, I came back to the city and saw that these gangs had lapsed into violence. It was very difficult for me to accept this failure and this is why I decided to devote myself to what I call “social change...”
Dimple spent two years in Cambodia between 2005 and 2007 and took up English teaching and volunteering for the association which welcomes the “returnees” (RAP, the Returnee Assistance Project, which later became RISP, the Returnee Integration Support programme) who have freshly arrived in Cambodia, forced to leave the United States. She realised the consequences of deportation on those who had faced it: the feeling of rootlessness, the difficulty to start anew in a country that is indeed their motherland but where they have never lived before.
When she went back to the United States, she saw that the number of deportations had increased. “Deportation potentially affects all immigrants who are not American citizens and who have a criminal record, even if the case was a one-off and nothing more. Why or when it happened simply doesn't matter. Even being in possession of the Green card is not recognised. Holding the Permanent Resident Card does not make you an American citizen. The law is unforgiving with non-citizens.”
Agreements signed all over the world
Only two countries haven't signed the deportation agreement with the United States: Laos and Cuba. Vietnam, which has showed opposition to it for a long time, is now taking the same path. In March 2001, Cambodia signed the agreement with Washington and since 2002, deportation has been the fate of 187 Cambodian-Americans all in all. The 15 Cambodians who were arrested on August 5th could well be next on the list if the ICE proceeds to close their case in less than 90 days. Beyond this limit, the prisoner must be released.
Precision on the “Ira-Ira law”
In the United States, the deportation policy is part of an arsenal of immigration measures that the Illegal Immigration Reform And Immigrant Responsibility Act (known as “IRA-IRA”) hugely toughened. It was enacted in 1996 under the Clinton presidency and roughly establishes that:
- The people who commit minor crime or offence out of “moral turpitude” (e.g. shoplifting, street drinking...) can now face deportation.
- Any crime or offence, small as it may be, is called “aggravated felony “from the moment it is committed by a non-citizen.
- The IRA-IRA law is retroactive: a non-citizen can face deportation for an offence they committed up to 20 years before. This is even before the law was amended.
- The IRA-IRA law introduces the notion of 'due process'. This means that no candidate facing deportation can benefit from the examination of their case, and that no mitigating circumstances or considerations will be taken into account (e.g. the fact that a person may be a family carer or married to an American citizen).
Highly controversial arrangements
In order to defend this legal text, the authorities usually make a well-oiled securitarian speech which seduces many a family in America. Bruce M. Foucart, a special agent in charge of the immigration services in Boston, explained in the August 9th edition of the newspaper The Boston Globe: “Every individual targeted as part of these operations has a criminal record. The raids target known criminals and gang members who have contributed to the street violence that has rocked communities...”
This salesman talk does not satisfy everyone for all that. In Lowell, threats of deportation have truly started to shake the Cambodian community. Some members even denounced a crying injustice towards those who have already paid their debt to society and have since then started a new life.
Niem, a bilingual therapeutic assistant who arrived in Canada in 1979 before leaving to settle in Massachusetts in 1994, explained without mincing her words, on the occasion of a “Deported Diaspora” meeting in the offices of the Cambodian Mutual Aid Association (CMAA), why she “totally disagrees” with the immigration law.
“It's too easy for the United States to trash the people who don’t fit the mould and that they don’t want anymore. When those people arrived here, most of them were just children, hurt by too many years of war, and life in the refugee camps. They grew up here. The American society is responsible for what they have become, not Cambodia! Why treat them like this? What these people need is help with their reintegration within society...”, she fulminated. Niem then reminded the audience that the Cambodian community played a part in the economic revival of Lowell, “a town which was like an abandoned city when we arrived. And this is the gratitude we get?” Her conclusion does not need repeating: “We must fight this law, just like people had to fight segregationist measures between Black people and White people in the past! We cannot pretend that our country is a democracy and wants to set a good example everywhere in the world, when this is how it acts at the same time with immigrants!”
Immigrants often feel powerless in detention centres
Last August, on the occasion of the Water Festival in Lowell, Dimple Rana and the campaigners of “Deported Diaspora” collected some 600 signatures defending their cause. “People feel a lot more involved nowadays. We must not give up but keep rallying instead. After the arrests, there is still abuse to report, from what happens in those detention centres. Many detainees are unaware of their rights and don't have a lawyer, and the immigration services are far from seeing to it”, Dimple pointed out.
The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) currently spends US$1 billion a year – the money usually goes to private groups or companies in charge of managing the prisons – in the administration of the detention of more than 27,500 immigrants on the whole of the American territory, according to the Bill of Rights Defense Committee website
Being aware of your rights...
Chanthan spent nearly two months moving “heaven, earth and money”, in her own words, to have her brother released.
“When my brother was arrested, I went to see him in Pennsylvania where he was being detained. I was told he wasn't there, and it was a lie. They just wouldn't let me see him. A few days later, he was sent to New Mexico, 2,500 miles from Lowell!!!* I had to find a lawyer who would live nearby and accept to take care of his case. I called dozens of them but only encountered refusal. I sometimes nearly got ripped off by unscrupulous lawyers who knew we were far away, vulnerable and probably ready to do anything to see our relative again. I finally found an immigration lawyer from Texas. She is a very good person. After 5 weeks, she had him released! I couldn't believe it... I think that if families manage to find the right lawyer, they have greater chances to avoid deportation.”
In the end, Chanthan paid out US$2,000 for her lawyer's fees and US$10,000 for the American administration to have her brother released on September 19th this year. She may be able to get some reimbursement if her brother does not make any wrong move in the eyes of the immigration services and the police during the three months following his release.
Chanthon, who lost 11 pounds in the meantime, was reunited with his two sons and went back to work. He got very close to experiencing disaster. Unfortunately, most prisoners are not as lucky as Chanthon, who benefited from the devoted support of his sister. Chanthan, thanks to her mastering of English and ability to find money quickly, succeeded in stopping the evil machine of evictions.
* Creating geographical distance between families and detainees to avoid contact and the launching of legal action is a technique that the American immigration services frequently use.
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