Our families belong with us. Our families belong in the safety of our homes.

We demand that President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas STOP THE RAIDS, IMPLEMENT A MORATORIUM ON SOUTHEAST ASIAN AMERICAN DEPORTATIONS, and take action to LIFT THE VISA SANCTION on Cambodia.

ICE has once again begun detaining our family members. Among them is Mr. Vet Buot, known as Oum Vet (Uncle Vet) to his friend's children and in the Khmer community, who have been asking about his whereabouts. Vet Buot is a migrant farmer and fisher from Cambodia, who has been in the United States for decades. Vet Buot arrived in the U.S. as an orphaned teenage refugee. He has struggled his entire life after surviving genocidal labor camps in Cambodia, poverty, and the violence of incarceration in the U.S.

While finding means of survival, he had served time for a felony. These past few years he had finally found stability in work, community, and health. He has support of his friends, Cambodian community, and his employer. They would like to see him released, to be able to get back to daily life with them which he has been working hard to rebuild.

We are fighting for his freedom.

We’ve always fought for our people and we’ll do it again.

We know Southeast Asians are in the U.S. because of violent American military intervention and bombing campaigns in Southeast Asia forced us to leave our beloved homes. And now the U.S. is once again displacing us and breaking up our families. To date, over 2,000 Southeast Asian Americans have been deported from the United States, including more than 1,000 Cambodians. More than 15,000 people have final orders of removal to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam currently.

The removals are the direct result of visa sanctions placed on these countries by Biden’s Department of Homeland Security. This has devastated communities who have survived U.S.-backed wars, violence, and genocide and face poverty, incarceration, and now, deportation while living in this country. Despite public requests for the Biden Administration to lift the sanctions, they remain in place.

Many of us have been in the U.S. for decades, trying to rebuild our lives even through poverty and war trauma. Rather than supporting us with resources to get us back on our feet, the U.S. government is treating our lives as disposable. The conditions where our loved ones are caged are also killing them. Without any real efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19, ICE is knowingly letting vulnerable detained immigrants and refugees die from COVID-19 and intentionally spreading this virus the world over.

We demand that President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas STOP THE RAIDS, IMPLEMENT A MORATORIUM ON SOUTHEAST ASIAN AMERICAN DEPORTATIONS, and take action to LIFT THE VISA SANCTION on Cambodia.