Trump Deported A Washington Man To A Country He's Never Been To, Community Members Call On Gov. Bob Ferguson To Bring Him Home

On Wednesday evening, dozens of community members gathered outside the Henry M. Jackson Federal Building in downtown Seattle to demand that Gov. Bob Ferguson act to bring home Washingtonian Tuan Thanh Phan. Per his family, Phan is currently shackled in a shipping container at U.S. military base in Djibouti, a country for which he has no connection. Speakers insist that Ferguson has the power to not only bring Phan home, but to make sure no other Washingtonian meets this fate by dismantling the prison-to-ICE pipeline. 

Earlier this year, Phan completed a 25 year prison sentence for assault and murder. 

“When [Phan] was 18, he made a mistake,” Ngoc Phan said at the Wednesday rally. “He feared for his life and in shock he fired a gun that resulted in someone’s death, he’s been remorseful, he’s repented, and he’s served his whole 25 year sentence.”

Phan lived in Washington with legal resident status, but in 2009 the government revoked that status. He left prison in March with a standing deportation order. He and his family made arrangements in Vietnam, where he moved from at just nine years old and where his family expected ICE would send him. 

Instead, ICE stuck Phan on a flight with seven other immigrants to South Sudan, which then got redirected to Dijbouti. The “third country” deportation, Ngoc Phan argued, appears to be the Trump administration “testing the waters” in their plot to undermine due process protections under U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment in order to meet cruel and arbitrary quotas for his mass deportation scheme. 

In March, the Trump administration issued guidance to allow deportations to countries for which deportees have no connection without giving them the chance to express their fear of being persecuted, tortured and killed in that country. Then in April, Boston-based U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy issued a nationwide preliminary injunction, blocking potentially thousands of these fast-tracked deportations. Trump asked the Supreme Court last month to lift Murphy’s injunction. 

“What this administration is trying to do is basically condemn him to a second and illegal sentence of third country deportation," Ngoc Phan said. "And so we have to fight back. If we do not do that and they are able to get away with this, you and I could be next.” 

Phan’s supporters laid out three basic demands for Ferguson at Thursday’s rally.

First, they want Ferguson to bring Phan home. Speakers argued that Ferguson should fight for all immigrants, not just the ones that “look good” to him. The least Ferguson could do to meet this demand, speakers said, was to follow the lead of Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who went to El Salvador to visit his constituent, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador. 

Secondly, the organizers called on Ferguson to stop Washington’s collaborations with ICE. In 2019, Washington state passed the Keep Washington Working law, which prohibits all state agencies and police from collaborating with ICE — except one, the Department of Corrections (DOC). This allows DOC to inform ICE when they will release an immigrant, so that ICE can snatch them up. 

“They call that facilitating transfers, we call that collaborating with ICE, we call that being a dirtbag, we call that being dishonest, we call that lying,” said JM, an organizer with Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Awareness Group.

Third, the organizers called on Ferguson to issue pardons for immigrants who have served their time so they can see their release date as an actual end to their punishment and opportunity to celebrate with family and start a better life. 

Ferguson did not respond to The Burner’s request for comment, but you can let him know how you feel here. Almost 900 people have signed the letter in support of bringing Phan home as of Thursday morning.