At least four Cambodian refugees in the San Francisco Bay Area were detained on March 13 during an immigration check-in. Asian-American groups in the San Francisco Bay Area are trying to assist Cambodian refugees who received summons this month to show up to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, where they will most likely be detained.
By Agnes Constante
According to the Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus, a legal and civil rights group, at least four refugees in the Bay Area were detained on March 13 during an immigration check-in. Two of them are being represented by the caucus, which is fighting their deportation orders.
Kevin Lo, an attorney at the caucus, said it’s hard to say for certain whether the detainees will be deported, but his group remains optimistic. For his client, Hay Hov, 39, who was convicted of solicitation to commit murder when he was 19, Lo said the conviction is “clearly not deportable.”
Hov, according to The San Francisco Chronicle, served a five-year sentence after his conviction. “I did my time,” Hov told the Chronicle. “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 February, a client that Lo and his colleague Melanie Kim co-represented became the second Cambodian deportee to return to the United States, an event made possible because of changing immigration laws — including what convictions make an individual removable from the U.S.
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