Stop Vietnamese Deportations

March 22, 2008
The Honorable Micheal Chertoff
Secretary
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Washington, D.C. 20528

Dear Secretary Chertoff:

We the undersigned demand that the Department of Homeland Security halt the deportation of the approximately 1,500 Vietnamese immigrants included in the recent Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). The conditions of this repatriation agreement are unjust, violate human rights of the deportees, and perpetuate the US government%u2019s lack of accountability over the aftermath of the Vietnam-US War.

The Department of Homeland Security has yet to justify the conditions by which immigrants may fall under the repatriation agreement, a hypocritical betrayal to the Vietnamese American community whose existence in the US was directly a result of the intervention of US foreign military forces during a Vietnamese civil battle.  

Those under this repatriation agreement are punished two or three times over for infractions the US seemingly arbitrarily defines as %u201Caggravated felonies,%u201D including some minor violations and misdemeanors. Many pending deportees have already served their time in immigration detention or criminal incarceration years ago. However, this agreement requires them to be detained a second time and deported%u2014three punishments for one conviction.

Some pending deportees have committed no crimes, but were denied a fair day in court. Others may have simply been refugees at sea for too long, and entered the US after 1997, when the US stopped accepting refugees of the Vietnam War.

On issues of human rights, those who stand to be deported must leave behind established families, friends and communities, and leave to a country which the US Commission of International Religious Freedom has sited recently that Vietnam%u2019s human rights violations remain dismal (Feb 2008). The US governments%u2019 own lack of discussion over the rehabilitation of deportees in Vietnam further violates their basic human rights. We stand in unity with other Vietnamese community efforts that protest the human rights violations of these deportations. These other community petitions have also been addressed to your attention.

The Department of Homeland Security has stated this agreement is a culmination of ten years of negotiation with Vietnam, which stands alongside decades of economic and diplomatic power plays that exploit every day people of both nations. At the same time the 2001 Vietnam Human Rights Act directly links non-humanitarian aid to the US%u2019s supervision of Vietnam%u2019s progress over human rights violations, the US will send deportees to Vietnam when human rights violations remain dismal.

We refuse to accept the conditions of this repatriation agreement and call for its immediate halt.