Civil rights activists have filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Cambodian immigrants arrested by US immigration officials, who claim that they are being detained unlawfully. Nak Kim Cchoeun of Long Beach and Modesto California’s Mony Neth were recently taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, together with a hundred immigrant refugees from Cambodia. All had deportation orders against them in what an Asian Americans Advancing Justice statement claims were the biggest raids ever experienced by the Cambodian community.
The organization filed the lawsuit on 27 October. Neth and Cchoeun both arrived in the US during the 1980s as refugee minors from families escaping the Khmer Rouge, and in the 1990s both ran afoul of the law. They were given deportation orders but Cambodia has often failed to cooperate with the acceptance of deportees and they were released under supervision after repatriation efforts collapsed.
The lawsuit says that both Neth and Cchoeun have stayed out of trouble and followed the rules since. It alleges that timely and adequate notice was not given to either immigrant by federal officials, who also revoked their release without offering evidence to show that repatriation was now possible for the pair.
Comments could not be made on any pending legislation, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but last week immigration officials told KPCC radio that the arrest of Cchoeun was a part of the continuing effort to see Cambodian nationals with deportation orders repatriated in their home nation.