Victory: Gov. Newsom pardons Cambodian Americans facing deportation

Together, we stopped two California families from being ripped apart by ICE, but there’s still more to do.

Thanks to the relentless activism of our friends at Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Asian Law Caucus, Asian Prisoner Support Committee, Southeast Asian Resource Action Center, DailyKos and nearly 10,000 CREDO members in California who signed our petition, Gov. Gavin Newsom pardoned two Cambodian-American refugees, Hay Hov and Kang Hen, who were facing deportation.

ICE is tearing apart California families by deporting Cambodian-Americans with past convictions of any kind at an alarming rate. A majority of the Cambodian-Americans that ICE is targeting arrived in the country as refugees during the Vietnam War era when the United States military secretly bombed Cambodia with 2.7 million tons of explosives.

Hov and Hen are two Cambodian refugees who came to the United States as children. ICE targeted them for deportation based on crimes they committed as young adults. Both completed their sentences, turned around their lives, started families and became important parts of their communities.

Thanks to massive grassroots pressure on Gov. Newsom to grant them pardons, Hov and Hen will likely be able to remain with their families in California. But our work is not done yet. ICE is still detaining more than 50 Cambodian Americans and could deport them to a country they barely know as soon as this summer.

Speak out now to keep the pressure on the governor to intervene. Add your name today to urge Gov. Newsom to continue to grant pardons to Cambodian-Americans who face imminent deportation.