"We Feel We Got Abandoned Again": The story of Vietnamese refugees in Trump’s deportation firing line

Huy Quoc Phan, a 43-year-old Vietnamese refugee, is the embodiment of the storm that has confronted thousands of Southeast Asian immigrants in the Trump administration's forceful policy of deportation. Phan, who came to the United States as a boy after escaping postwar Vietnam, has spent more than a month in a Louisiana detention facility wondering if he'll be sent back to a place he hasn't seen since he rode away on a boat as a child.

Now an Alabama warehouse employee with an American wife, Amy, and kids, Phan's life hangs because of a criminal conviction from decades ago for his part in a robbery when he was 17 years old that resulted in the death of a shopkeeper. He spent 15 years behind bars and started over, but his fate in America now is not guaranteed.

“I did something wrong in the past, but nothing wrong now,” Phan said to USA Today.


For decades, both the Republican and Democratic administrations protected Vietnamese refugees such as Phan from deportation, citing their specific status as war and displacement survivors. This protection was given to approximately 8,600 Vietnamese who arrived prior to 1995, when the U.S. and Vietnam normalized relations. Vietnam did not take back deportees from this group, and the Biden administration effectively ended such removals.

But President Trump's second year in office has seen a dramatic reversal. The government has redoubled efforts to deport criminal immigrants, even long-standing favorites. "With President Trump and (DHS Secretary Kristi) Noem at the helm, ICE is continuing to safeguard Americans by arresting and removing criminal aliens," replied Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security.

The overall context is a sweeping clampdown on immigrants and refugees. The Trump administration insists that it deported approximately 140,000 individuals till April 2025, and detention increased from 41,000 to more than 46,000 through mid-March. The policy has sanctioned ICE raids at vulnerable places and intensified the usage of detention centers, including contentious suggestions to utilize Guantanamo Bay for immigrant detainees.

Humanitarian parole initiatives and legal safeguards for the vulnerable have been rolled back, not just impacting Vietnamese refugees but also huge numbers from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua.Critics caution that the policies violate America's commitment to its allies in the war.

"We feel we got abandoned again," Quyen Mai, executive director of the Vietnamese American Organization, stated. Legal scholars and historians insist that the U.S. government committed to safeguarding refugees such as Phan, who now stand to be returned to a land they hardly know, with few resources and extreme uncertainty.

Phan's testimony brings to light the deep human implications of America's changing policy of deportation—a policy that, for some, revisits old wounds and raises sensitive issues about justice, redemption, and national responsibility.