As the Trump administration in the United States moves forward with controversial deportation plans, up to ten thousand Vietnamese immigrants are facing the final imposition of deportation orders, some of them dating back twenty years.
According to advocates for citizens affected by the new policy, the Trump administration is trying to remove Vietnamese immigrants who have been given a final order of removal by an immigration judge due to convictions for crimes committed. These immigrants arrived in the country before 1995 and were supposedly protected by an agreement signed by the United States and Vietnam in 2008.
The Trump government has since reinterpreted the agreement, and now claims that it can forcibly repatriate Vietnamese immigrants who entered the US as refugees before 1995, and who have since been convicted of criminal activity in the United States.
Advocates for the immigrants and government critics say that the deportation orders will put deportees in danger as the one-party regime in the southeast Asian nation has a long record of persecution of opponents and dissidents.
A news report tells the story of one man affected by the new policy