Hmmmm…this is an interesting report from the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday [emphasis mine]:
After he was convicted of assaulting a Philadelphia man in 1998, Cambodian refugee Mout Iv knew he was in the United States on borrowed time.
As it turned out, quite a lot of borrowed time.
He was freed from a Pennsylvania prison after four years, but paperwork snafus prevented his immediate return to Cambodia, as required by law. So immigration agents put Iv on “supervised release,” allowing him to open a barber shop in Olney
The government kept tabs on him with scheduled interviews, random phone calls, and unannounced visits.
Last week, at an ostensibly routine appointment, Iv, 33, was fingerprinted, photographed, and arrested. He’s now in prison being readied for deportation. [We learn later in the story that Iv came as a 7-year-old refugee—ed]
It “was always in the back of my mind,” said his fiancée, CJ Vonglaha, 26. “But I didn’t think in my wildest dreams it would be like this.”
Nor did many of the thousands of other noncitizen refugees being rounded up nationwide because of crimes largely committed years ago. In Philadelphia this month, the heat has been on the Cambodian community, which has protested deportation proceedings against at least six of its members.
Behind the rash of detentions and expulsions is the Obama administration, which is attempting to win public and congressional support for immigration reform.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) is on track to deport 400,000 people this year – a 10 percent increase over expulsions in 2008, the last year of the George W. Bush administration, and more than double the number in 2005.
Read the rest of the story.