A Vietnamese man who came to the U.S. as a child refugee in the 1980s is locked in a last-ditch fight to remain in the Bay Area, even after a local superior court wiped away a decades-old conviction this April. He spent nearly 10 years in prison for a robbery he says he did not commit, supports an American wife and four U.S.-citizen children, and is now scrambling to raise roughly $10,000 for an immigration lawyer who can try to get his deportation order dismissed.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, police pulled him over in 1994 and arrested him on a warrant after he was identified in a photo lineup. A jury convicted him even though a former girlfriend testified they had been together the night of the robbery. The Chronicle reports that his green card was revoked after the conviction, he served almost a decade in prison, and a Bay Area superior court vacated the case this April. The paper quotes him saying, “I’m paranoid about being separated from my family, snatched.”
Enforcement shift and data
Advocates say his ordeal is part of a broader shift in immigration enforcement. More than 72% of people held in ICE detention had no criminal convictions as of March, according to the Deportation Data Project. An analysis by Stop AAPI Hate shows sharp increases in arrests and removals of Asian and Pacific Islander people since early 2025. Critics point to a January 23, 2025 Department of Homeland Security memo that broadened enforcement discretion as a turning point that left long-settled refugees newly exposed to deportation.
How people are fighting back
There are legal strategies that can weaken or erase the grounds for deportation. California courts can vacate convictions when defendants did not meaningfully understand the immigration consequences of a plea, a path advocates have used to knock out the underlying basis for removal. Immigration specialists say those post-conviction remedies are technical and time-sensitive, and that some people also seek gubernatorial clemency. Gov. Gavin Newsom pardoned several Southeast Asian residents in 2019, as national outlets reported at the time, although pardons do not automatically eliminate federal immigration grounds for removal. Reeves Immigration notes that vacatur, clemency and federal relief operate differently and often must be carefully paired with immigration filings to halt a removal order.
Local organizing and legislation
In the South Bay, local groups have been hustling to line up both lawyers and political support. The San Jose-based Vietnamese American Organization, led by Quyen Mai (who himself received a Newsom pardon in 2019), has supported roughly 140 people since early 2025, and the Chronicle reports that about 15% of those clients have secured post-conviction relief that could ultimately lead to dismissal of removal orders. In Washington, Rep. Judy Chu reintroduced the Southeast Asian Deportation Relief Act in February 2026, aiming to bar removal for many long-settled refugees and open a path for others to reopen their cases.
What comes next
For the man at the center of this case, the court’s vacatur is only step one. He and his supporters still need an immigration attorney to ask for the removal order to be tossed and to pursue any remaining avenues for state or federal relief. Meanwhile, community groups and lawmakers say his situation is a stark example of why they are pressing courts, governors and Congress for changes that would prevent refugees who have already served their time from facing what they see as a second punishment: exile from the only home they really know.
