City Council members call on ICE to release ‘lifelong Philadelphian’ in detention

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Philadelphia City Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke joined local immigration activists to denounce recent federal deportation policies and call on Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release Sereyrath “One” Van.

“We are here because one man, a son, a friend, a community member, and a Philadelphian, born in a war zone that America had everything to do with,” O’Rourke (At-large) said, referring to Van. “Today, he’s at risk of being deported to Cambodia, a country that he’s never stepped a foot in.”

Van’s parents left Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge genocide — which killed 2 million people — fleeing to Thailand, where he was born and lived in a refugee camp. The family arrived in Philadelphia in 1984 when Van was 4 years old. Van was later granted permanent residence and a green card.

In 2018, Van was convicted of intent to sell cocaine and marijuana. While serving his sentence, ICE began deportation proceedings. Last August, Van was taken into custody at the Moshannon Valley Detention Center, where he has been held since. The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act allows for the deportation of refugees and other immigrants — even green card holders — if they are convicted of certain crimes, including some drug offenses.

Van Sam, community defense manager with VietLead, said Van’s story is common among the Southeast Asian community in the U.S. who are not given the benefit of second chances even after having served their sentences.

“Our community was displaced by the U.S. military intervention during the war in Southeast Asia, formerly known as the Vietnam War, which ended only 50 years ago,” Sam said. “We were resettled and systematically disenfranchised communities in American cities because the refugee resettlement process failed us.”

Tens of thousands of refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos settled into the Greater Philadelphia region in the late 1970s and 1980s, making Philadelphia the site of the largest refugee population on the East Coast, according to VietLead.

The group played a recording of a statement by Van, who said that he had made a “very poor choice” that led to his 2018 arrest and conviction but argued that he should have the same opportunity as others to reintegrate into the only community he has ever known.

“I take full responsibility,” he said. “They gave me a second chance when it came to my criminal matter because I got rehabilitated, did the programs, I got paroled. But where is my second chance when it comes to immigration? There is none, and that’s because all they see is my conviction.”

The assembled activists also called for the closure of the Moshannon Valley Detention Center, which Daisy Romero Chavarría, director of immigration organizing at Juntos, said has “already built a reputation of fostering and covering up human and civil rights abuses.”

The detention center previously served as a federal prison but reopened as a privately run ICE detention center in 2021, managed by GEO Group, Inc., which operates more than a dozen other ICE detention centers nationwide. With a capacity of 1,876, the facility is the largest immigrant detention center in the Northeast.

Juntos, a Philadelphia-based immigrant advocacy organization, joined law students at Temple University to compile testimonies from people held at Moshannon for a report in which they found “inhumane, punitive and dangerous conditions.”

“There is a practice of prolonged detention where many are held for independent periods of time awaiting deportation,” Chavarría said. “Meanwhile, they’re subjected to dehumanizing and life-threatening conditions, including lack of access to medical care, unsafe overuse of solitary confinement and general mistreatment and racial harassment harassment by facility staff.”

WHYY News attempted to contact ICE’s Philadelphia field office but had not received a response by publication.

Staff from O’Rourke’s office will be joining members of VietLead and Juntos in a visit to Moshannon to meet with Van and others. The visit is part of an initiative led by Juntos to provide letter correspondence, commissary support and in-person visits.

Councilmembers Curtis Jones (District 4) and Rue Landau (At-large), deputy director at Free Migration Project Adrianna Torres-García, and VietLead executive director Nancy Nguyen joined O’Rourke at the event.