Lynn man, facing deportation to Cambodia, hopes for a second chance

Samath “Sam” Thoeun is one of many Cambodians who came to Massachusetts in the wake of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s. Born in a Thai refugee camp, he was a baby when his family arrived. They had a relative in Lynn, and that's where they've lived for the last 37 years.

Thoeun was a poor refugee kid in a gritty city, and he doesn't pretend he was an angel. In middle school, he joined a local set of the Bloods street gang. Lynn was rife with gangs at the time, police say — and Thoeun had numerous run-ins with the law.

Two decades later, Thoeun says all that is far behind him. He's 38 now, a husband and father, with a job driving a forklift at a plant in Danvers. He's been checking in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as required, for years.

But in June, immigration police arrested Thoeun and locked him up in Dover, New Hampshire. 

“It was like a scene from a movie,” Thoeun said, recalling the arrest in a phone call from the jail.

It was June 23, and he'd just dropped off his daughter for her last day of school. He said ICE agents in black SUVs boxed his car in. He rolled down the window a crack, and they threatened to shatter the glass if he didn’t comply. Thoeun said one agent had his gun drawn while others surrounded him and ripped him out of the car.

Now he's facing deportation to the home country of his parents, a place he's never been.

Thoeun is the type of immigrant ICE says it’s going after: people with criminal records, even old ones. And his rap sheet is not a good look. It lists charges including assault and battery with a dangerous weapon; several gun offenses; disorderly conduct; trespassing; possession of alcohol as a minor.

All that happened before he turned 21. He was convicted of none of the charges but one: possessing a knife at age 17.

“I caught my first case as a young kid,” Thoeun said. “Somebody was making fun of me, bullying me as in like, ‘Oh, you wear the same thing every day,’ this and that.”

Thoeun's differences were visible to the other kids. He walks with a limp because he was born with no toes on one foot — he said that earned him the nickname "Limpy."

A former gang unit police officer in Lynn told WBUR that in the early 2000s, young Cambodians there had few choices — if you weren’t a star student, there’s a good chance you joined a gang. According to the Lynn Police Department, Thoeun was a confirmed member of the Bloods.

Thoeun said he started getting gang tattoos before he turned 14. He said he's working on covering them up now. But he doesn’t try to deflect blame for what he did when he was young.

"You fall into peer pressure sometimes hanging out with the wrong crowds, you know, doing dumb things," he said, and that led to "encounters with law enforcement."

Thoeun claims he left the Bloods nearly 20 years ago. But amid the Trump administration’s massive ramp-up in immigration enforcement, that might not matter much.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment about Thoeun's case. The agency has said repeatedly that it's going after the "worst of the worst" criminals for deportation. Thoeun's youthful record could fit the bill, but a closer look at his story suggests the reality of immigration enforcement is more nuanced than the good-vs-bad-immigrant narrative allows.

Thoeun is a citizen of Cambodia, though he was born in Thailand and he's been in the U.S. since he was 18 months old. Thoeun's lawyer said he was given only three years to stay in the country when he first entered.

He's never succeeded at becoming a U.S. citizen — his parents say they were scammed when they tried to get their kids' status in order. By the time they were grown, Thoeun's record made it too complicated to try to get citizenship, according to the family, who said both parents and two other siblings were able to become naturalized citizens.

Lowell, Lynn and Revere are home to tens of thousands of Cambodians, and a good portion have never become U.S. citizens, according to Johnson Mao, a leader in Lynn's Cambodian community.

"Now because of what's going on with the world, people are fighting their way to become citizens," he said. "But, in general, I think it's been difficult for the Cambodian community because they don't know where to start."

Mao said people often lack the knowledge or resources needed to secure citizenship.

He said people have to face the consequences of any crimes they've committed, but it's painful to see neighbors getting picked up by ICE for mistakes they made when they were younger.

"They were out there to fend for themselves and they just happened to fall into the wrong hands and people," Mao said. "Without guidance, you tend to make these bad choices."

Thoeun has had a “final removal order” since 2008. Because ICE couldn't secure travel documents to deport him to Cambodia, the agency issued an "order of supervision," allowing him to remain here with regular check-ins, according to Thoeun's lawyer. Still, with a removal order in place, ICE could deport him at any time.

On a recent day inside Thoeun's apartment in Lynn, his mom lit a candle and recited a verse to pray for his return.

Thoeun’s wife, Vanny Ly, said their elders don’t often talk about what caused them to leave Cambodia 50 years ago — it’s taboo. The communist Khmer Rouge regime was responsible for the deaths of roughly 1 in 5 Cambodians. But now that Thoeun is in custody, his mother, Thearavy Chan, is telling the story.

Ly summarized her mother-in-law’s description, in Khmer, of the violence they fled. Chan said she witnessed her sister being marched off to be killed.

"Her sister waved at her, and then the soldier was like, ‘Oh, what do you want to go and join her?’ "

Chan said she was just 15 when she left for Thailand. She met her husband in the refugee camp, where they lived for nearly a decade and had three kids. In 1988, they were granted entry into the U.S.

For Chan, seeing her son in jail — facing deportation to the country she fled — resurfaces old trauma.

“Witnessing her family getting murdered,” Ly said, “and then now to be separated from her son, it's like, 'What did I do to deserve this?' ”

Thoeun’s 11-year-old daughter, Jada, is a cheerleader and about to enter middle school. Family photos show her and Thoeun out to dinner, enjoying a carnival ride together, Jada as a baby in his arms. He has a big smile in each shot. Now, sitting between her mother and grandmother, Jada was barely able to speak through her sobbing.

She said it's just not the same without her dad at home: “He's someone I can play around with and joke around with. He's the one that always helps me with homework or just helps me in general.”

For Thoeun's wife, it’s hard to fathom her husband being seen as a threat to society. Ly remembers seeing a woman at the grocery store who couldn’t afford everything in her cart. Thoeun stepped up.

“Sam goes, ‘It's OK, just scan it for her, I'll pay her part,’” she said. “You can’t tell me he’s not a good person if he’s willing to help strangers."

Ly is also the daughter of Cambodian refugees. But she is a U.S. citizen, born in Lowell at the same hospital where she gave birth to her daughter. If Thoeun got into trouble when he was younger, Ly said, they don't talk about it. And she feels it shouldn’t be grounds for tearing a family apart.

“People make mistakes when they was young,” she said. “Nobody's perfect ... God's not perfect."

Thoeun's lawyer, Jonathan Ng, said when he took the case, it seemed like a long shot. The final removal order means the case is closed. Ng told his client he had maybe a 30% chance of getting a judge to reopen it. That was good enough for Thouen.

“When you have a wife and you have a kid,” Ng said, “under these circumstances you might literally throw the Hail Mary and do anything and everything you can.”

The first week of August, Ng was traveling when he got a message from the court. The judge had reopened Thouen's case. The Hail Mary pass was received — the family celebrated — but that only opened the door to further proceedings.

Thoeun has a hearing scheduled for Thursday in Chelmsford immigration court. Ng said he’ll argue for his client's deportation to be permanently halted, and that he should be set free in the meantime. Ng plans to say the deportation would severely harm Thoeun's wife and daughter, both U.S. citizens, and that his life and circumstances have changed dramatically since his deportation order came down in 2008.

“I hope the judge could see in his heart that he's a good man," Thoeun's wife, Ly, said. "He deserves to be with us again.”

Success in court, Ng said, could result in a green card.

Asked why he thinks he should not be deported, Thoeun paused to consider his answer. And it wasn't about him, but his family.

“I need to be here for them. I need to be here to help them, provide for them,” he said. “My wife, she can't do it alone.”