11th Annual Penn Asian Pacific American Law Students Association Conference
New Directions: Exploring the Future of Asian American Progress
Sheraton University City : 3549 Chestnut St. Phila, PA 19104
One Love Panel 1030AM-1200PM
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Criminal and Immigration Law: A Comprehensive Analysis of Deportation in the Cambodian Refugee Community
The Cambodian community in Philadelphia, and around the country, has experienced a dramatic increase in the detention and deportation of community members on the basis of prior criminal convictions. The Obama Administration officially announced a new policy prescription in August 2011 that targets and prioritizes “criminal aliens,” or anyone with criminal histories, for removal from the United States. These policies neglect to consider the severe flaws in the immigration system, including the presence of retroactive punishment, denial of individualized review, the broad range of crimes deemed deportable, and the value of rehabilitation. The experience of Cambodian families who have been broken apart by deportation has led the community to stand up to keep their families together. Locally, a grassroots organization, One Love Movement, was formed to create more awareness of the deeper story behind what the government labels “criminal deportations.” This expert panel will provide multi-faceted insight into the issue of deportation in the Cambodian community, including issues of foreign relations, behavioral health, education, the links between the criminal justice and immigration systems, and the current political landscape around immigration policy.
Opening Remarks Councilman James F. Kenney City of Philadelphia
Panel Moderator Stella Tsai Asian Pacific American Bar Association of PA
Panelists
Ben Kiernan Professor of History and of International and Area Studies, Yale University
Rorng Sorn Executive Director, Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia
Joe In Organizer, One Love Movement
Edward McCann, Esq. First Assistant District Attorney of Philadelphia
Honorable Steven Morley Federal Immigration Judge, Philadelphia Immigration Court
Helly Lee Director of Policy, Southeast Asia Resource Action Center
Tuyet Duong Advisor on Civil Rights and Immigration, White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders
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Please see detailed panelist bios and registration info below.
Ben Kiernan is the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History, Chair of the Council on Southeast Asia Studies, and founding Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University (www.yale.edu/gsp). He also founded the Cambodian Genocide Program (www.yale.edu/cgp), which established the Documentation Center of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, uncovered the archives of the Khmer Rouge secret police, and detailed the case for an international tribunal. He is the author of How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, 1930-1975 (1985); The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979 (1996); and Genocide and Resistance in Southeast Asia: Documentation, Denial, and Justice in Cambodia and East Timor (2007). His edited anthologies include Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia (1993), and Conflict and Change in Cambodia (2006), for which he won the Critical Asian Studies Prize. Ben Kiernan’s latest book is the multiple award-winning Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (2007).
Rorng Sorn is the Executive Director of the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia (CAGP). CAGP, the city’s foundation of social, health and education programs for Cambodian refugees and their families has achieved extraordinary organizational development and growth over the past thirty years. Rorng has over 20 years of experience working in the community providing health, social and educational services to Cambodian American community members. She was a community health educator for the Albert Einstein Medical Center, a community health advocate for the Maternity Care Coalition, and a medical interpreter/health educator for the Philadelphia Health Department. She serves on the Philadelphia Mayor’s Commission on Asian American Affairs and on Keystone Mercy Health Plan’s Community Advisory Committee. Rorng is Cambodian American. After surviving the Vietnam War’s effects in Cambodia, escaping the Khmer Rouge, hiding a year in the jungle between the Cambodian and Thai border, and living 8 years in refugee camps in Thailand, Rorng and her family were finally able to come to the United States as refugees in 1987 and were resettled in Philadelphia, PA. She holds a graduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice in Nonprofit/NGO Leadership.
Joe In is a Cambodian refugee who came to the United States in 1982 with his mother, sister, and aunt. His father was a soldier in the Cambodian army, and was killed fighting against the Khmer Rouge during the war in Cambodia. Joe was resettled with his family in Brooklyn, and stayed there until he was 9 years old. They then moved to the Hunting Park area of North Philly where he attended middle school at Roberto Clemente. He later moved to the Logan area of Philly and attended Olney High School. He knows first hand the flaws in the education system, including lack of resources for immigrant and refugee youth and parents, language access issues, the acceptance of bias violence in schools, and education budgets that do not put students first. He graduated and studied Business Management for 2 years at Cheyney University, but had to leave when his mother passed away in 2002. Since then he has worked as a contractor in the Philadelphia area. Joe is also an artist, producer and manager of AZI Fellas, a Cambodian Hip Hop group that formed out of Olney 8 years ago. When his friends and family were detained and deported to Cambodia in the Fall of 2010, Joe formed One Love Movement with a group of other people in the community, and has been a dedicated and passionate organizer for justice for the last 18 months.
Edward McCann has been with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office for more than 21 years. He currently serves as the First Assistant District Attorney of Philadelphia. He began his career in the Law Division, litigating miscellaneous motions
and state habeas corpus petitions on serious felony cases, including homicides. He later moved to the trial division, trying dozens of major felony and homicide cases before becoming the Chief of the Felony Waiver Unit in 1998, where he supervised attorneys with 1-3 years of experience. From 2002-2009, Ed was the Chief of the Homicide Unit, overseeing the investigation and prosecution of all homicides that occurred in the City of Philadelphia. In 2010, Ed became the Deputy of the Trial Division, overseeing more than 200 trial attorneys, detectives and support staff. Ed supervised all of the trial units in the office including the Homicide Unit, Family Violence and Sexual Assault Unit as well as all of the geographic prosecution bureaus. In 2011, Ed was promoted to First Assistant District Attorney. In this capacity he oversees the daily operations of the entire District Attorney’s Office. He is instrumental in the making of all prosecutorial, administrative and investigative decisions for the office. He has been a frequent lecturer on trial advocacy and mental health defenses for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association, the National District Attorneys Association and Aequitas (the Prosecutor’s Resource on Violence Against Women).
Steven A. Morley was appointed an Immigration Judge with the Executive Office for Immigration Review in Philadelphia in December 2010. Prior to taking the bench, Judge Morley practiced immigration law as a founding partner of Morley, Surin & Griffin for nearly eight of his twenty-seven years in private practice. Before entering private practice Judge Morley was a federal and state court public defender in Philadelphia. He successfully argued Mitchell v. United States, before the United States Supreme Court, extending the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent at sentencing. He also argued numerous cases before the Third Circuit as well as before other U.S. Courts of Appeals. He was an editor of the Immigration & Nationality Handbook (AILA) for many years, and frequently lectured on immigration matters. He is adjunct instructor at Earle Mack School of Law where he has taught Immigration Law, Refugee & Asylum Law, Sentencing Law and Immigration Litigation. He has also been adjunct at Villanova Law School, Rutgers-Camden Law School and taught immigration in the paralegal program at Community College of Philadelphia. Judge Morley is an honors graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, where he also received his B.A.
Helly Lee is the Director of Policy for the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC), where she focuses on immigration and poverty issues. Ms. Lee got her start in policy during her time spent on Capitol Hill as an intern and staff assistant, and later as an advocate in non-profit organizations such as Hmong National Development, Inc and the Healthy Asian Americans Project at the University of Michigan. Ms. Lee is a Board of Director with the Legacies of War organization which raises awareness about U.S. cluster munitions in Laos left over from the Vietnam War era that continue to maim and kill innocent children and villagers today. She also has an extensive background in providing direct services in the child welfare and juvenile justice fields. Ms. Lee received her Masters of Social Work with a concentration in Social Policy and Evaluation from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and her B.A. in Social Work and a concentration in Criminal Justice from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Tuyet Duong serves as the Advisor on Civil Rights and Immigration for the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. She has joined the Initiative from the Department of Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, where she worked on immigration benefits issues, border policy, language access, detention reform, and emergency response issues. Ms. Duong has spent seven years working on issues at the intersection of immigration and civil rights. Previously, she was a Senior Staff Attorney for the Immigration and Immigrant Rights Program with the Asian American Justice Center (AAJC) and led its language access and immigration policy initiatives for three years. Prior to this, Ms. Duong provided immigration legal assistance for a national ethnic nonprofit, BPSOS, Inc., in Houston, Texas for two years. Ms. Duong has also authored pamphlets on language access and disaster, and most recently, an article on family immigration in the Asian American Policy Review of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She holds a J.D. from the University of Texas Law School and also a Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Texas.
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This panel is sponsored by One Love Movement, Asian Pacific American Bar Association of PA, and Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia.
Please see the New Directions Conference schedule here and consider registering for an entire day of amazing speakers and panelists from all over the country.
Or to register for the One Love Panel only, please do so here.
CLE credit will be available to students and attorneys.
We give so much thanks to the Penn APALSA Conference Team for hosting this panel, our co-sponsoring organizations for all of your time, effort, support and love, and all the panelists and speakers for helping us tell the deeper story of our community struggle.
MLK DAY 2012 ~ On January 16th, we marched in honor of Dr. King and the fight for Human and Civil Rights. We partnered with Juntos, Media Mobilizing Project and DreamActivist PA, to bring immigrant communities together to stand for the rights of all families. 500 people marched in the streets to the Regional ICE Headquarters at 16th and Callowhill, Philadelphia. There we declared that we will continue to fight for change in unity.
COMMUNITY OUTREACH ~ We are a grassroots movement. Our focus is building power and knowledge of criminal and immigration laws, campaign messaging and organizing strategy, within our communities. We engage in regular community meetings to inform and empower the people in our lives, so we can fight back together against policies that oppress our families and our communities.
ONE LOVE PANEL ~ On February 4th we brought together an expert panel to provide multi-faceted insight into the issue of deportation in the Cambodian community, including issues of foreign relations, behavioral health, education, the links between the criminal justice and immigration systems, and the current political landscape around immigration policy. It was a huge success! Please stay tuned for a video and written reflection right here on the One Love Blog.
CHILDREN OF THE KILLING FIELDS ~ A multi-media piece by Michael Maher of the international publication, The Global Mail, published on February 8th. Mout Iv of Olney, talks about life before and after deportation. Please view the entire story here.
