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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been relentless in their attack against the Vietnamese community. Since March 2017, ICE has escalated its detention of Vietnamese refugees and between 8,000 and 10,000 Vietnamese Americans are still at risk of being unlawfully detained.
The Vietnamese Americans whom ICE is illegally jailing were accepted by the United States as refugees before July 12, 1995, many of them young children or teenagers when they arrived in America. They fled Vietnam in the aftermath of the Vietnam War to escape profound hardship and political persecution under the new communist government. They made the United States their new home and become lawful permanent residents years ago.
The transition for Vietnamese refugees who resettled in America in the years following the Vietnam War was not easy. Due to ad hoc resettlement practices, they were often placed in resource-poor and economically deteriorating neighborhoods, where they lacked a supportive ethnic community or access to mental health services to cope with war-related trauma. Under these challenging conditions, some refugees made mistakes, which led to criminal convictions and ultimately deportation orders.
For years, Vietnam had refused to accept the deportation of any Vietnamese refugees who entered the U.S. before 1995. Therefore, ICE had in previous years routinely released pre-1995 Vietnamese immigrants with deportation orders, allowing them to turn their lives around and live productive lives. Now, however, deportation officers are picking up these previously released immigrants and holding them for prolonged periods of time, despite the inability to carry out their deportation.
We urge you to sign this petition to demand ICE stop breaking families apart and urge them to release these immigrants back to their families.