Cambodian genocide survivor detained by ICE

Sithy Yi fled genocide in Cambodia and came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1981. She was detained earlier this month at a regular immigration check-in in Santa Ana, and her lawyer, Kim Luu-Ng, says Yi is being held unlawfully at the Adelanto detention center.

Luu-Ng said Yi was ordered by an immigration court to be removed from the country in 2016, but her removal was withheld out of concerns she would be tortured if she returned to Cambodia.

After 10 years complying with ICE instructions and initiating a still-pending visa application, Luu-Ng claims that federal immigration officials detained Yi two weeks ago as a form of punishment and to instill fear in immigrant communities.

Yi is one of potentially hundreds of people with pending visa applications meant to protect victims of crime or human trafficking whose status has been abruptly put at risk by immigration policy changes ordered by the Trump administration, Luu-Ng and other immigration attorneys told LAist.

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Yi cannot be deported back to Cambodia, her attorney said. Luu-Ng said immigration officials have not told her where Yi might be deported to and says her detention is unconstitutional and inhumane without a plan of where to send her. Luu-Ng has filed a petition in federal court arguing for Yi to be released from detention.  Federal officials have not yet responded in court.

”I think this case asks a very simple question,” Luu-Ng said. “Can the government jail someone when it has no real plan to deport them?

“The Constitution says no."

ICE has not responded to LAist’s request for comment on this story.

Escaping violence

Sithea San, Yi’s sister, remembers the day her family was forced to leave their home.

According to her recollection, the Khmer Rouge approached them at gunpoint April 17, 1975, saying they had to leave before American forces were expected to bomb their city, Phnom Penh.

The Khmer Rouge was a Communist regime that brutally tortured, murdered and starved more than a million Cambodians in the 1970s. A United Nations-assisted tribunal began investigations in 2007 and found surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The family left that day thinking they would be gone for only three days. Their horrific experience would last years, until they arrived in the U.S. as refugees in 1981.

Sithea San recounted how Yi, the eldest sister who was just 9 years old when they left their home, used to steal food to keep her family alive in Cambodia.

After getting caught stealing by the Khmer Rouge several times, San said her sister was given a final warning: If she got caught again they would kill her entire family. They led Yi to a place where they said she, her mother and two sisters would all be buried.

Yi was subjected to forced labor and torture at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, which she later described to Luu-Ng in 2016 as she fought in immigration court to be allowed to stay in the U.S.

Yi still carries scars from where guards would burn her with cigarettes, Luu-Ng told LAist. She said Yi has other scars that lie deeper.

Safe from the Khmer Rouge, troubles continue in the US

San said her family came to the U.S. in 1981, sponsored by her uncle. They arrived in California with just $10.

Yi’s mother and sisters had all become U.S. citizens by 1990, San told LAist, but Yi’s path to legal residency was more complicated.

San said their family did not understand it at the time, but Yi suffered from PTSD. She began to have seizures after they escaped Cambodia, which often prevented her from going to school once they arrived in the U.S.

Yi was also bullied at school, leading her to drop out, her sister said.

Far from Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge, she again became a victim of abuse. Yi fell into a cycle of domestic violence, Luu-Ng told LAist, and she was severely abused by multiple partners over the years.

In 2011, Yi was convicted on drug charges and sentenced to probation. The abuse she faced at home continued and after being so severely beaten by her partner that she could not walk, Luu-Ng said, Yi missed one of her probation appointments.

She said that probation violation led to about a year in state prison, and from there Yi was transferred to ICE custody for removal proceedings.

Protections for victims of torture

Luu-Ng began working under a United Nations grant to help survivors of torture in immigration proceedings in 2009, and first met Yi in 2013.

She had talked with survivors of torture camps in Germany, Poland, Afghanistan and many other countries, but the story of what Yi and her family went through still left her shocked.

“ I've spoken to a lot of survivors of torture,” Luu-Ng told LAist. “Sithy’s story impacted me very, very deeply.”

Luu-Ng took on her case and argued in immigration court that Yi fell under protections granted by the United Nations Convention Against Torture — commonly known as CAT — banning anyone from being deported to countries where they will most likely be tortured.

The judge presiding over a 2016 hearing agreed.

“ We literally walked out of court within 30 minutes,” Luu-Ng said, “even the government counsel acknowledged the grave humanitarian concerns with this case.”

LAist reached out to ICE and an attorney who represented the agency, but they did not comment on the case.

Luu-Ng said Yi is not eligible for asylum status because of her conviction, but she has never heard of anyone being deported after receiving CAT protection.

“ Individuals who receive CAT withholding typically are allowed to live out the rest of their lives in the United States with a work permit,” she told LAist.

Even so, Luu-Ng said Yi also applied for a U visa in 2022 to further protect her from being deported. U visas are intended to give temporary immigration status to crime victims who have cooperated with law enforcement. Luu-Ng said Yi did cooperate with law enforcement in a case against one of her abusers and should qualify for a U visa, but she said they can take eight to ten years to be granted in some cases. She is still waiting for a decision on whether Yi’s visa will be approved.

Jennifer Diep, San Croucher, Sithy Yi and Sithea San attend the book release for "Exiled: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to California and Back," by Katya Cengel. The family was featured in the book.

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Courtesy Sithea San

)

A policy change puts Yi’s future at risk

The Immigration Center for Women and Children (ICWC) and other immigrant rights organizations sued the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, in October of last year over new immigration enforcement policies on how immigration agents treat victims of abuse or human trafficking.

The group claims in court documents that the new policy “has allowed, for the first time in decades, the detention and removal of survivors of these violent crimes as a routine matter, without regard for the many protections Congress put in place for them.”

Erika Cervantes, a staff attorney for The Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, is part of the legal team representing ICWC in the case. She told LAist that until early 2025 there was a presumption that victims who came forward to help law enforcement would be protected.

She said that U visas and T visas — another type of visa for victims of human trafficking — have strengthened law enforcement by allowing victims to be comfortable coming forward and telling police about their abuse without risk of being deported.

Then, in January, President Trump issued an executive order calling for the “total and efficient” enforcement of immigration laws. ICE shortly followed with a memo that removed previous requirements for agents to identify whether their targets are victims of crimes that might qualify them for protections against deportation.

Cervantes said the memo also cuts protections that had been in place for victims who are waiting for their U and T visas to be approved. Attorneys for ICE previously had been instructed to not seek deportation of U and T visa applicants unless there were “exceptional or exigent circumstances,” according to the new ICE memo, but Cervantes said the new memo removes the presumption that victims would be protected.

“ [The memo] essentially green lights targeting this vulnerable community who went out of their way to share their story, go through this visa process,” Cervantes said. “There’s an about face, and now they’re being put behind bars.”

Cervantes said the ICE memo has affected hundreds of people, and ICWC is asking a federal judge to set aside the policy changes.

“ We're trying to challenge the administration's attempt to criminalize victims,” she told LAist.

Detained by ICE

Yi’s detention on Jan. 8 came as a complete surprise.

According to her sister, Sithea San, she had helped the government when she came forward as a victim and always went to her monthly check-ins with ICE.

“ She complied with every single thing that the government asked her to do,” San told LAist.

In November, two months before her detention, Luu-Ng and San went with Yi for her check-in with ICE. Luu-Ng said they were concerned at that time that Yi could be detained because they saw reports of other people being taken from their families during check-ins.

After discussing Yi’s case with Luu-Ng, the immigration officials at the Santa Ana facility said she would need to start wearing an ankle monitor, but she was free to go home. Luu-Ng recalled one official telling her that as long as Yi didn’t tamper with the ankle monitor or violate any conditions of her electronic monitoring, ICE would not detain her.

“We went out and everyone was in tears, relieved,” Luu-Ng said.

Yi continued to check in, and Luu-Ng thought she would be fine because she was following ICE’s instructions. The next two months Yi went to her check-ins without a lawyer, but her sister still came along.

At her January check-in, San said they saw people crying in the waiting area. She said Yi approached them and tried to comfort them.

Then after waiting about an hour, ICE called Yi into a back room, alone.

Yi can’t read in English, San said, and sometimes she struggles to understand when people talk to her. San wanted to accompany her sister to be sure she understood any questions she might be asked.

Instead, she was stopped at the door.

“ And then I heard the sound . . . the handcuffs,” San said. “And that moment I feel like, am I dreaming? Is this real?”

San said she told the ICE agents that her sister had CAT protections and a pending U visa application, which she showed them. She said they told her it didn’t matter.

When San was later able to visit her sister in detention, she said Yi told her the ICE agents tried to coerce her to sign legal documents she couldn’t understand and threatened that things would get worse for her if she refused.

She said Yi didn’t sign the documents.

“So unfair”

Yi would not be in this situation under any other administration, said Mariko Khan, who is on the board of the nonprofit organization Cambodia Town, where she met Yi about 15 years ago.

“ Things would've been taken care of years ago and she certainly would not have had to be corralled at her check-in,” Khan said. “I mean, that's so unfair.”

Khan said Yi has been a consistent volunteer with Cambodia Town, which serves the largest Cambodian community outside Cambodia itself.

Khan had heard about some of Yi’s background over the years, and she learned that Yi had first found counseling when she was in prison. Having a background as a mental health professional, Khan said she was amazed to see Yi’s improvement.

“ I think it shows a lot of character and integrity that she could, given all that she had suffered, actually get better,” Khan said.

Yi has also been a mainstay with the Cambodia Town Parade. Khan said Yi had led a group of up to 30 women in the parade’s “Stop the Hate” event for the past three years.

Sithea San said Yi planned on coming to her house on Jan. 8 to work on the choreography for this year’s parade after they went to check in with ICE.

Fear in local communities

Manju Kulkarni is the executive director of AAPI Equity Alliance, and she says people being detained by masked agents in the streets and others being held at their immigration appointments reminds some in Southeast Asian communities of the governments their families once fled.

Federal agents have repeatedly detained people at scheduled immigration check-ins over recent months, including Eaton Fire survivor Masuma Khan, 60-year San Diego resident Kazem Majd and dozens of others across California.

“ Communities that are made up often of refugees who escaped an American war in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam . . . are faced with the familiar terror,” Kulkarni told LAist. “Terror from which they thought they had escaped.”

Kulkarni and Luu-Ng told LAist they are deeply concerned that if Yi is deported to a third-country, she will then be sent by that country back to Cambodia despite an immigration judge already acknowledging she would most likely be tortured.

Reuters found that 22 people who were deported to Ghana as a third-country were then sent to their country of origin last year, despite court orders in the U.S meant to prevent that from happening.

For now, Luu-Ng is focused on getting Yi out of detention.

When San visited her sister at the Adelanto detention center on Jan. 18, Yi said she’d just had a nightmare, with scenes from her time under the oppression of the Khmer Rouge.

She told San being detained reminds her of those times, and she tries to keep her mind on other things.

“Remember during the Khmer Rouge,” San told Yi. “You know what we do. We need to have hope.”

Yi told her sister she had been trying to fill her time by teaching the other detainees how to do traditional Cambodian dances.

“How do you do it? How do you get the music?” San recalled asking Yi.

“She said she just sings.”