Duc never imagined his past mistakes would cost him everything. Brought to the U.S. as an infant in the 1980s, Duc, a Vietnamese refugee, has always considered the U.S. his home. But after serving time for a felony drug conviction, he learned that his green card had been revoked, and he now faces de portation to Vietnam, a country he has never called home. “I didn’t know they could do that,” said Duc, who asked to be identified by a nickname for fear of retribution. “If I had, I would’ve fought my case harder.” The political fight over undocumented immigration has long centered on the U.S.-Mexico border. But within Asian communities, where undocumented status often carries deep cultural stigma, many are grappling with a largely overlooked crisis. In the first Trump administration, deportations of Southeast Asian immigrants, many of whom arrived as refugees, intensified, according to the Asian Pacific American Law Journal. And with President Donald Trump back in office, fears of another crackdown are growing, especially as federal immigration policies overall have become increasingly stricter. From refugees who arrived decades ago to visa holders who overstayed, the pathways into undocumented status for Asians are varied. An estimated 261,000 undocumented Asians reside in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan organization that tracks immigration issues. Duc was born in 1981 in a refugee camp in the Philippines. His parents, fleeing the Cambodian civil war and the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror, met in a refugee camp before being sponsored to the U.S. by an uncle. When Duc was 3 months old, he arrived in Los Angeles with his family, growing up in Chinatown during the 1980s and ’90s, an era marked by gang violence. “It was tough growing up,” Duc said. “People were shooting each other, robbing each other. Chinatown in the ’80s and ’90s — it was pretty bad.” At 28, after a rough stretch in his twenties and a conviction for a drug-related crime, Orange County resident Duc (who asked to be identified by a nickname for fear of retribution), had his green card revoked, resulting in him being undocumented in the U.S. He was photographed at VietRise, a progressive community advocacy group, in Garden Grove, CA on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG) At 28, after a rough stretch in his twenties and a conviction for a drug-related crime, Orange County resident Duc (who asked to be identified by a nickname for fear of retribution), had his green card revoked, resulting in him being undocumented in the U.S. He was photographed at VietRise, a progressive community advocacy group, in Garden Grove, CA on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG) Operations and Programs Manager Indigo Vu talks with Duc at VietRise in Garden Grove, CA on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. At 28, after a rough stretch in his twenties and a conviction for a drug-related crime, Orange County resident Duc (who asked to be identified by a nickname for fear of retribution), had his green card revoked, resulting in him being undocumented in the U.S. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG) Operations and Programs Manager Indigo Vu talks with Duc at VietRise in Garden Grove, CA on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. At 28, after a rough stretch in his twenties and a conviction for a drug-related crime, Orange County resident Duc (who asked to be identified by a nickname for fear of retribution), had his green card revoked, resulting in him being undocumented in the U.S. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG) At 28, after a rough stretch in his twenties and a conviction for a drug-related crime, Orange County resident Duc (who asked to be identified by a nickname for fear of retribution), had his green card revoked, resulting in him being undocumented in the U.S. He was photographed at VietRise, a progressive community advocacy group, in Garden Grove, CA on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG) Show Caption1 of 5At 28, after a rough stretch in his twenties and a conviction for a drug-related crime, Orange County resident Duc (who asked to be identified by a nickname for fear of retribution), had his green card revoked, resulting in him being undocumented in the U.S. He was photographed at VietRise, a progressive community advocacy group, in Garden Grove, CA on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG) Expand But escaping that environment was difficult. As a young boy, Duc was surrounded by gangs, and kids looked up to them because “they had the money, they had the girls, they had the cars.” “There was an alleyway up my house where the gangs would throw footballs with the kids, and every now and then, they would give us money,” he said. In his 20s, he was struggling financially and turned to selling drugs. “I was in a rough spot, and I just needed money to survive. I had friends that wanted drugs, and I knew how to get them. That’s how it started,” he said. Data indicates that immigrants, including undocumented individuals, are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born citizens. A 2020 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that immigrants were 60% less likely to be incarcerated compared to their U.S.-born counterparts. Duc was arrested on federal drug charges in 2008 and was released in 2011, but by then, his green card had been revoked. “I came from a refugee camp, and my parents were born in Vietnam. How are you going to deport me back to refugee camps that aren’t out there anymore?” he said. “I’m sure Vietnam doesn’t know who I am. I’m sure the Philippines doesn’t know who I am.” Duc is one of about 8,675 people considered Vietnamese citizens in the U.S. with final removal orders as of November, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. While deportations of Vietnamese refugees who arrived before 1995 were rare, enforcement ramped up under the first Trump administration. Vietnamese immigrants who came to the U.S. before 1995, many of them refugees from the Vietnam War, were generally protected from deportation. A 2008 Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Vietnam safeguarded most of these immigrants, but in 2020, the agreement was revised, removing that protection. Tracy La, president of VietRise, a civil rights advocacy group in Orange County focused on the Vietnamese community, said fears of deportation weren’t widespread until Trump’s first term. “People who came before 1995, which are most of them, were protected from deportation. But that’s changed a lot in the last four years … and there’s been a lot of uncertainty and increased fear in the community.” Jennifer Koh, who teaches immigration law at Pepperdine Law and focuses her research on immigration enforcement, said Duc’s case is far from unique. “There are many cases along those lines … including people who came as young children, people who came as refugees,” Koh said. “Green card holders facing deportation after having completed their criminal sentences is really experienced by many people as a double punishment.” Under immigration laws signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, legal residents convicted of certain crimes can be deported — even if they’ve lived in the U.S. for decades. “When people are convicted of an offense and they serve their time, the legal system has determined that they satisfied their sentence,” Koh said. “Then it really raises hard questions about whether it makes sense to impose this additional distinction on them,” said Koh, “especially when they haven’t lived in their country of origin for a long time.” For many, fear now dictates daily life. “People are afraid to go to the doctor, to send their kids to school, even to work,” said Nikki Oei, policy manager at the Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance, a nonprofit social services organization based in Garden Grove. “They live in constant worry.” Oei, who has many undocumented clients, noted that many undocumented Asians avoid seeking help due to cultural stigmas and the pressure to live up to the model minority stereotype. “If they’re undocumented, or have a very tenuous immigration status, they will do everything in their power to make sure people don’t know,” she said. “Because there is not only wanting to live up to that public narrative, but also a lot of pride in our cultures to maintain that image of being, ‘I’m as good of a citizen as anybody else is,’ and anything that might put that into question is shameful.” Jenny Seon, an immigration attorney at the Ahri Legal Aid Center in Buena Park, primarily serves Koreans, one of the largest groups of undocumented immigrants and the leading source of Asian DACA recipients. She said even within Korean churches — major hubs of community life — many people remain silent about their immigration status. “I go to a church in Orange County, and one of the pastors at our church hears the hardship of people,” Seon said. “On the down-low, they funnel me people to talk to anonymously because they don’t want to reveal themselves.” But sometimes, their undocumented status isn’t even their fault. Seon noted that some tens of thousands of U.S. adoptees, largely from South Korea, are undocumented. After the Korean War, many adoptees were brought to the U.S. on temporary visas, including tourist or medical visas. However, their adoptive parents failed to complete the naturalization process, leaving them undocumented. Three years ago, Oei worked with a Filipino client from South Orange County who had been trafficked for labor. He had overstayed his work visa because his employers failed to renew it. “He didn’t know he was undocumented until we were looking at what public benefits he could be eligible for,” Oei said. With Trump back in office, Duc fears he may become a target in a new wave of deportations. La said that the father of a Vietnamese family who VietRise is helping was detained during a routine ICE check-in in February and is now being held in San Bernardino County. Since his release from prison, Duc has worked to move forward. He attends his routine ICE check-ins, cares for his aging parents and raises his 5-year-old daughter and two stepchildren. However, he remains the only non-citizen in his family. “Everyone around me are citizens except for me. I don’t know what the hell I was waiting for,” he said. “Growing up, they never tell you, ‘Hey, if you get in trouble, you’re going to get deported.’ I’ve been here since I was 3 months old. I’m 43 now.” He hopes lawmakers, including Trump, will recognize that deporting longtime residents does more harm than good. “Know that people change, and they’re not the same people that they were when they committed crimes,” Duc said. “Taking them away from their family and friends is not going to change anything. It’s actually going to make the community worse. The kids need their dad.” The current political landscape offers little in the way of solutions. Conversations about legalization, like the amnesty granted under Ronald Reagan’s 1986 immigration law, have largely faded. Instead, the debate has tilted toward enforcement, a shift that John Liu, a professor emeritus of Asian American studies at UC Irvine, sees as part of a longstanding paradox in U.S. immigration policy. “Every country has a right to regulate who they grant citizenship to, and every country certainly has the right to limit the number of citizenship they want to grant, but for societies that have large undocumented immigrants, they need to decide how they want to take care of it,” he said. “Trump’s answer is to deport them,” Liu said, while past administrations have considered ways to grant legal status. For now, people like Duc remain in limbo, unsure of what the future holds. “If I knew … I probably wouldn’t have done it,” Duc said. 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