San Francisco Chronicle: "He grew up in California. Now, he’s forced to live in his birth country — a place he’s never known"

He was bleary-eyed and brokenhearted when he climbed into a government agent's car outside Phnom Penh International Airport. As they rolled through the ancient, buzzing city, Phoeun You, 46, saw Cambodian ground for the first time since he as a toddler with his family fleeing genocide. Now it was supposed to be his home.

They stopped at an office, where agents fingerprinted You and offered words of welcome. "Hey," one officer said, "you have nothing to worry about." 

You, who had grown up in Long Beach, was desperately worried. He knew no one in Cambodia. He didn't know where he would live. He didn’t speak Khmer, the national language. He technically wasn’t even a citizen of Cambodia.

At age 19, in 1995, You shot and killed a 17-year-old boy. He came to deeply regret the murder while, by all accounts, he undertook a remarkable rehabilitation, becoming a counselor for men in San Quentin State Prison who also struggled with childhood trauma. After serving 26 years of a 35-to-life sentence, You was granted parole and planned to start over in Oakland.

Then state prison officials turned him over to immigration agents.

When the opportunity came to prevent You’s deportation through a pardon, Gov. Gavin Newsom silently declined, brushing off calls to do so from hundreds of clergy, state legislators, the Oakland City Council and supporters who called the deportation a cruel exile that amounted to “double punishment” for his crime.

Newsom, a former San Francisco mayor who is seen as a possible future Democratic presidential candidate, has issued dozens of pardons to halt deportations. He has done it in other murder and manslaughter cases, citing the person’s rehabilitation and the consequences of deportation on their family and community.

Why did You end up alone in Cambodia while his family ached 8,000 miles away? Newsom’s office won’t say, citing a policy against discussing applications. Newsom still could pardon You at any time, allowing him to come back.

You’s deportation was made more likely because, unlike other state and local law enforcement, California prison officials aren’t barred from working with immigration agents and continue to turn over former prisoners — nearly 8,000 from 2018 through 2022. Legislation to bar such transfers narrowly failed in the state Legislature last year. A new version, the Home Act, passed its first two committee votes in April.

You’s deportation places him among more than 800 Cambodian Americans who’ve been sent back, often after criminal convictions, since the U.S. and Cambodia signed a repatriation agreement in 2002, according to San Francisco-based Advancing Justice — Asian Law Caucus. 

Phoeun You served 26 in California prisons before the state parole board granted him parole, though he is unable to serve parole because the U.S. deported him to Cambodia, a country he hadn't seen since he was a small child. 

The Trump administration ramped up deportations in 2017 by imposing sanctions against Cambodian officials, saying the nation was hindering the U.S. from its work to “remove dangerous criminals.” Deportations continue under President Biden. In November, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen urged Biden to reconsider the “humanitarian” issue of exiling people to a country they hardly know while separating them from families in the U.S.

You’s oldest brother, James You, called the deportation un-American. “We care about family” in America, he said. “We don’t separate our family.”

Deportations often elicit backlash in the cases of people like You who came to the country as children. But cases like his are nonstarters for those who argue people who’ve been convicted of serious crimes should be deported, a baseline to which even Democratic presidents like Barack Obama and Biden have hewed.

Caught in the gap between America’s ideals and the limits of its compassion is You, who found himself saying goodbye to the Cambodian agents at a boarding house for newly arrived deportees.

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