Sithy Yi fled genocide in Cambodia and came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1981. She was detained earlier this month at a regular immigration check-in in Santa Ana, and her lawyer, Kim Luu-Ng, says Yi is being held unlawfully at the Adelanto detention center.
Luu-Ng said Yi was ordered by an immigration court to be removed from the country in 2016, but her removal was withheld out of concerns she would be tortured if she returned to Cambodia.
After 10 years complying with ICE instructions and initiating a still-pending visa application, Luu-Ng claims that federal immigration officials detained Yi two weeks ago as a form of punishment and to instill fear in immigrant communities.
Yi is one of potentially hundreds of people with pending visa applications meant to protect victims of crime or human trafficking whose status has been abruptly put at risk by immigration policy changes ordered by the Trump administration, Luu-Ng and other immigration attorneys told LAist.
Yi cannot be deported back to Cambodia, her attorney said. Luu-Ng said immigration officials have not told her where Yi might be deported to and says her detention is unconstitutional and inhumane without a plan of where to send her. Luu-Ng has filed a petition in federal court arguing for Yi to be released from detention. Federal officials have not yet responded in court.
”I think this case asks a very simple question,” Luu-Ng said. “Can the government jail someone when it has no real plan to deport them?
“The Constitution says no.”
ICE has not responded to LAist’s request for comment on this story.
Manju Kulkarni is the executive director of AAPI Equity Alliance, and she says people being detained by masked agents in the streets and others being held at their immigration appointments reminds some in Southeast Asian communities of the governments their families once fled.
Federal agents have repeatedly detained people at scheduled immigration check-ins over recent months, including Eaton Fire survivor Masuma Khan, 60-year San Diego resident Kazem Majd and dozens of others across California.
“ Communities that are made up often of refugees who escaped an American war in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam . . . are faced with the familiar terror,” Kulkarni told LAist. “Terror from which they thought they had escaped.”
Kulkarni and Luu-Ng told LAist they are deeply concerned that if Yi is deported to a third-country, she will then be sent by that country back to Cambodia despite an immigration judge already acknowledging she would most likely be tortured.
Reuters found that 22 people who were deported to Ghana as a third-country were then sent to their country of origin last year, despite court orders in the U.S meant to prevent that from happening.
For now, Luu-Ng is focused on getting Yi out of detention.
When San visited her sister at the Adelanto detention center on Jan. 18, Yi said she’d just had a nightmare, with scenes from her time under the oppression of the Khmer Rouge.
She told San being detained reminds her of those times, and she tries to keep her mind on other things.
“Remember during the Khmer Rouge,” San told Yi. “You know what we do. We need to have hope.”
Yi told her sister she had been trying to fill her time by teaching the other detainees how to do traditional Cambodian dances.
“How do you do it? How do you get the music?” San recalled asking Yi.
“She said she just sings.”