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Detention To Deportation - Rethinking The Removal Of Cambodian Refugees, Bill Ong Hing

Bill Ong Hing

This article is part of a symposium on Immigration and Civil Rights After September 11: The Impact on California.

The United States helped to pull Cambodia into the Vietnam war, initially through secret bombings in Cambodia in 1969 and CIA support for a rightist coup in Cambodia in 1970. After the Khmer Rouge genocide of two million of its own people in Cambodia, thousands of survivors fled to refugee camps. Eventually, the United States admitted 145,000 Cambodian refugees. U.S. resettlement policies provided public assistance and job training for low-income jobs. Refugee families, however, were not provided with the tools necessary …