A growing number of Southeast Asian immigrants in Los Angeles and Orange counties whose deportation orders have been on indefinite hold for years are being detained, and in some cases, deported after showing up for routine check-ins at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices, according to immigrant attorneys and advocacy groups.
In recent months, a number of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese immigrants have been told that deportation orders that had been stayed — in some cases for decades — are now being enforced as the Trump administration seeks to increase the number of deportations.
The immigrants being targeted are generally people who were convicted of a crime after arriving in the U.S., making them eligible for deportation after their release from jail or prison. In most cases, ICE never followed through with the deportations because the immigrants had lived in the U.S. long enough that their home countries no longer recognized them as citizens, or as is the case with Laos, the home country does not readily issue repatriation documents.
Instead, under longstanding policies, these immigrants have been allowed to remain in the U.S. with the condition that they checked in with ICE agents regularly to show they were working and staying out of trouble. The check-ins generally start out monthly, but over time become an annual visit.
According to the Asian Law Caucus, as of 2024 there were roughly 15,100 Cambodians, Laotians and Vietnamese nationals living in this situation across the U.S.
“People are very worried about their check-ins. They are dedicated to complying with their reporting requirements and want to continue to comply as they have been doing for years, but they are also afraid to report based on what they have seen on the news,” said Lee Ann Felder-Heim, a staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus.
Connie Chung Joe, the chief executive of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, said that in the last month her organization has been made aware of at least 17 community members in Los Angeles and Orange counties who have gone in for scheduled check-ins, only to be detained or deported.
“These are folks who’ve been here for decades,” Chung Joe said. “It just breaks the community and their families apart.”
Orange County is home to the largest diaspora of Vietnamese outside of their home country, many of them refugees who fled the fall of Saigon. The county’s Little Saigon is home to more than 100,000 Vietnamese Americans. In addition, tens of thousands of Cambodians and Laotians have settled in the Los Angeles area, according to the Pew Research Center.
Many Southeast Asian refugees were brought over as children, and not all got adequate support as they coped with the upheaval, said Laura Urias, program director at Immigrant Defenders Law Center. Some fell in with gangs as they struggled to assimilate, and that’s when they got caught up in the criminal system.
Although they may have gotten in trouble as youths, Urias said, many served their time and went on to get jobs and put down roots.
In one instance, a Cambodian immigrant went in for his ICE check-in and came out with an order to produce a plane ticket to Cambodia within 60 days, she said. Urias said none of the center’s clients have been deported at this point, but that she has heard about people without legal representation who were deported after a check-in.
“It’s definitely something that we haven’t really seen before,” Urias said. “It aligns with the overall message that this administration came in with — threatening to deport as many people as possible.”
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not respond to a list of questions from The Times about the reasons behind the policy shift and whether the immigrants’ home countries will accept them.
Urias said she suspects that the Trump administration’s looming tariff threats have made some countries more willing to cooperate and accept deportees.
Richard Wilner said his firm, Wilner & O’Reilly, in Orange, has seen an uptick in requests for consultations from the families of immigrants who have been detained. His firm does not take on clients who have been convicted of serious crimes such as sexual offenses and murder.
“In the past two weeks, I’ve gotten more phone calls than I have in the past 15 years or longer, because people are getting arrested,” he said.
He added that he hasn’t been able to figure out why some immigrants with delayed deportation orders are being targeted for removal and not others.
“These are people with outstanding orders of deportation, some of whom have gone on to lead remarkable lives, started families, businesses, good folks. Others have gone on to re-offend,” he said. “I don’t know what the parameters are, because not everyone is getting snatched up at check-in.”
This story originally appeared on LA Times
