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Imagine a loved one caught up in the criminal injustice system. They’ve served their sentence and should now be reunited with you. Instead, they’re transferred to an ICE deportation center hundreds of miles away. Or many states away. Maybe Colorado, Louisiana or Georgia. As you, your family and community try to help their case, you can’t get any information—neither from local nor federal authorities—about the status of their deportation, timelines, resources, alternatives. Nothing. Not even your attorney (if you have one) knows what’s going on. One day, without warning, your loved one is deported to a country they’ve either never known or haven’t been to since they were a child. With the VISION Act, California state lawmakers could’ve changed this last August, could’ve blocked state prisons and jails from carrying out such cruelty. They didn’t. Our very own Chanthon Bun, who does wellness outreach for our New Light program, fought for two years to pass VISION. He’s still fighting: “We’re trying to bring it back, put pressure on officials.” While imprisoned at San Quentin, Bun learned about CERI through ROOTS (Restoring Our Original True Selves), an Asian restorative justice program that focuses on diasporic history, really looking at how the Southeast Asian (SEA) children of the survivors of wars in places like Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos end up in prison and are later vulnerable to deportation. According to Bun, the media never focuses on the deportation of Asians: “People are surprised and dumbfounded when they learn that Asians are involved in deportation.” He believes that SEAs are in a “trauma war” and that the direct support and advocacy he commits to through New Light and the phenomenal Asian Prisoner Support Committee (APSC) is vital “because we’ve been quiet too long.” For Bun, “we” is intergenerational: “When I looked through my mother’s trauma, I could look through my own trauma.” Because of their statewide coalition-building efforts (with New Light and others) which brought elders, adults and youth together to protest, APSC helped to free more than 30 people from deportation and agitate for policy changes impacting thousands. All this is also personal: “I see my mother’s fear and their mothers’ fear.” Learn more about Bun and sign the petition for Governor Newsom to grant him a pardon. Please consider giving to APSC and sharing about their work!
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