U. S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney of the Central District of California issued a temporary restraining order Thursday preventing the Trump administration from deporting up to 1,900 Cambodian immigrants who have been convicted of crimes, including at least three men from the Sacramento area.
A federal judge in Santa Ana issued a temporary restraining order Thursday preventing the Trump administration from deporting up to 1,900 Cambodian immigrants who have been convicted of crimes, including at least three men from the Sacramento area.
Over the past few months, at least 100 Cambodians with felony records have been arrested across the country and targeted for deportation by the federal government, according to court papers. The Trump administration has been pushing Cambodia to repatriate these former residents, many of whom fled with their families when they were small children.
Another 1,700 people could potentially be deported on the grounds that they lost their legal status when they committed crimes.
The first group was scheduled for expulsion on Dec. 18, according to court records. U. S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney said Thursday he was issuing a stay of removal until the court “can give proper consideration to the complex issues presented” by attorneys for the Cambodians.
Holly Cooper of the UC Davis Immigration Law Clinic, representing long-time Davis resident Rottanak Kong, called the judge’s ruling “a huge victory for Cambodian immigrants whose criminal convictions are at least a decade old.”
Cooper said many Cambodians in detention have been moved between six or seven times to detention facilities in different states in the last 30 days, making it impossible for their attorneys to have meaningful access to their clients to review the legality of the removal orders.
The Trump administration has been in negotiations with the Cambodian government to accept the Cambodians targeted for deportation, including Kong. The Davis resident hasn’t been to Cambodia since he was a child and his family fled the brutal Khmer Rouge government, which slaughtered about 2 million people.
Kong was convicted of felony joy riding in 2003 at age 25 and sentenced to one year in jail.
Attorney Kevin Lo of Americans Advancing Justice – Asian Law Caucus, part of the legal team that filed for the injunction on behalf of all 1,900 Cambodians potentially subject to removal, called it a legal “Hail Mary.” He said he didn’t expect to win, in part because the legal bar for stopping the deportations was high.
“We were pretty surprised; it was such a long shot,” Lo said.
Lo said the temporary order will give detained Cambodians under imminent threat of deportation – a group advocates said numbers about 200 – time to potentially appeal or change the convictions that led to them losing their legal status in the first place. One of the two lead defendants in the case, Mony Neth of Stockton, has appealed to Gov. Jerry Brown to pardon him.. \
Stanislaus County court records show Neth was convicted in a 1995 case on a felony weapons charge with a gang enhancement, and a misdemeanor charge of receiving stolen property with a value of $400 or less. Court records also show that case was reopened on Dec. 8 and a Proposition 47 report entered into the court record – a possible sign that Neth’s case is being re-examined.
Cat Khamvongsa, Neth’s wife, said she last saw her husband on Monday at Rio Cosumnes Correctional Facility near Elk Grove, where he’s been held since October. She was allowed to deliver a suitcase to him and see him briefly before he was transferred to Texas for the deportation.
“I just feel like my husband deserves a second chance to be here with us, and we just need him home,” she said. “He keeps the family together.
Lo said his office had seen a letter from Cambodian officials confirming that government expected a chartered flight with at least 50 Cambodians aboard to depart Monday, Dec. 18 at 1:30 p.m. from El Paso Texas and arrive in Cambodia on Wednesday.
“That flight was already set up,” said Lo. “We were almost dreading Monday.”
Lo said he’s heard rumors that the flight is also scheduled to transport Vietnamese and Filipino deportees. Those individuals would not be covered by the Friday legal ruling.
The deportations remain clouded in secrecy. The government has declined to provide specific numbers of those detained or set for deportation. It also has not provided names of those to be deported.
ICE spokesman James Schwab said the government “does not comment on pending litigation, it’s too early to tell what is happening.”
The government has until Dec. 28 to file papers opposing the court order, and the attorneys representing the Cambodians will have until Jan 4 to reply. A court date has been set for Jan. 11 at 9 a.m. in the federal courthouse in Santa Ana.
