How the fall of Saigon fueled a refugee crisis that's still felt today
A woman who fled Vietnam for America in the 1970s says she once hoped that the U.S. would serve as a refuge from the upheaval in her home country. But now, with a family member facing potential deportation under the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration, she said it's beginning to resemble the place she fled.
'You are afraid to go to church. You are afraid to get on the bus,' said the woman, who's based on the West Coast and asked to be anonymous out of fear of retaliation. 'You're on high alert.'
Her family member is among the upward of 8,500 Vietnamese nationals who are facing orders of removal because of past convictions, with many of the offenses dating back decades to their youths.
Southeast Asians are three to five times more likely to be deported on the basis of an old criminal conviction compared with other groups, advocates say, likely due to the community's immigration status as refugees and the difficulties they have had acclimating to life in the U.S. The Trump administration's aggressive detention and deportation tactics, in addition to the growing pressure on Vietnam to accept deportees, have put the refugee group in a particularly precarious position, experts say.
Many of the refugees facing orders of removal fall under what immigration experts refer to as the 'migration to school to prison to deportation pipeline.' Advocates say it points to how those who resettled in the U.S. were given few resources, became entangled in the criminal justice system and were threatened with deportation upon serving their sentences.
As the world commemorates the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War, advocates say that the refugee community's issues have only been magnified.
'Your family was exiled at that point, forced out of the country, separated, starting over. And so you're repeating that cycle,' the refugee said of those who fled Vietnam and now face potential deportation.
Changing U.S. foreign relations have made refugees more vulnerable, experts say
Quyen Dinh, executive director of the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, or SEARAC, a civil rights group, said that Trump's first term had proved to be a tense time for refugee communities. According to DHS data, 382 Vietnamese individuals were deported during his first administration. That's a 114% increase from Barack Obama's second term. Under Joe Biden, 87 Vietnamese nationals were deported, although official data from his final year in office has not yet been published.
Legal experts and community advocates say that many previous protections for refugees no longer exist. In 2008, the U.S. and Vietnam struck a deal, guaranteeing that refugees who arrived in the United States before July 12, 1995, were not subject to deportation. However, during Trump's first term, more pressure was put on Vietnam to accept deportees and ICE began to detain those who arrived before 1995.
And toward the end of Trump's first term, the U.S. and Vietnam renegotiated the deal, creating a process to deport pre-1995 refugees. Tin Nguyen, a North Carolina-based immigration attorney, said that the increasingly fragile relationship between China and Vietnam, particularly in the South China Sea, likely led Vietnam to cave to repatriation pressures.
'Now, Vietnam needs the United States militarily and strategically to counterbalance China,' Nguyen said.
While the previous Trump administration put visa sanctions on countries like Vietnam that refused to accept repatriations, the new administration has also threatened tariffs, Dinh said. And it's likely to push countries that want to avoid economic consequences to bend. With third countries becoming involved in the American deportation effort, individuals are also fearful of being sent to countries that they are entirely unfamiliar with.
The Vietnam War resulted in what is considered the largest resettlement of refugees in American history, with almost 590,000 refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos coming to the U.S. from 1980 to 1990, according to Pew Research.
These refugee communities still struggle. More than one-fifth of Southeast Asians are considered low-income, higher than the national average, according to a 2020 report from SEARAC. When it comes to educational attainment, nearly 30% of Southeast Asian Americans, more than double the general population, have not completed high school or passed the GED. Immigration issues in particular plague the community.
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