SF Chronicle: "A Vietnamese refugee served as one of California's inmate firefighters. Then the state gave him to ICE."

On his final day in Folsom State Prison, Phi Pham paced the firehouse wondering what awaited him beyond the gray penitentiary wall.

Pham had spent the last year as an inmate firefighter, an elite position inside California’s second-oldest prison. Among his incarcerated peers, Pham developed a reputation as a team player and a talented firehouse cook. In written commendations, his civilian captain noted his integrity and “unrelenting work ethic.”
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Thanks in part to the glowing reviews he received from his captain, Pham was awarded early parole. Sentenced in May 2014 to 14 years in state prison for shooting someone, Pham would instead be released on June 16. Only Pham didn’t know if that meant he would go free.

Born in a refugee camp in the Philippines and hardened on the streets of Hayward, Pham says prison is where he worked to atone for the violent act of a 20-year-old whose parents had fled the chaotic aftermath of the Vietnam War. Though he has a green card, Pham never became a naturalized U.S. citizen. And while the state of California considered him rehabilitated, the federal government has its own system of justice and punishment.
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On the day of his release, Pham was turned over to the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. He’s now in a federal detention center in Colorado, waiting for an immigration judge to decide if he’ll be deported from the only country he’s ever known to one he’s never been to — Vietnam. A decision could come as early as Tuesday afternoon.

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