From Refugee to Deportee
An image borrowed from the internet of an unnamed member of the Tiny Rascals Gang.
Imagine if you were Cambodian in the early 1980’s. Your country is carpet-bombed for years amid an increasingly bloody communist revolution. You keep your wits about you and survive the genocidal dystopia of the Khmer Rouge period. You flee to a refugee camp in Thailand, when yet another aggressor - this time, Vietnam - invades.
Then you learn you’re being resettled in the United States, to start your life again. At long last, it sounds like you’ve won the lottery…. Right?... Not necessarily.
Unresolved trauma might impede your ability to function.
PROSPER: It wasn’t until I was a full adult that I realized my father had PTSD.
You and your kids might be a little naïve.
JC: I mean, the neighborhood that I lived in was all white, but the school that I went to was all black.
MPN: And was that another form of culture shock?
JC: It was because I didn't think people come in different colors like that.
In this new world, gang-life becomes a sad reality for many Cambodian refugee families, as the next generation is forced to survive on the streets in places like Long Beach, California and Lowell, Massachusetts, with limited refugee support.
Even that’s not the end of the story. Years later, some former child refugees discover they aren’t American citizens, because their parents didn’t understand the citizenship process. And if they commit a felony, or even just a couple of misdemeanors? Since 2002, the US has been deporting them back to Cambodia –where many have never stepped foot, have limited language skills, and which they know primarily through the nightmarish memories of the previous generation.
Welcome – this is episode 3 of “Who Killed Haing Ngor,” a real-time and crowdsourced podcast in which we explore both lingering questions about the murder and issues connected to the legacy of the Dr. Haing S. Ngor, the actor and political activist who’s probably best known for his role in “The Killing Fields.”
A quick shout-out before we start to Hannah Beech from the New York Times for her 2018 article on this topic, which was the first I heard about it. I’ll link to that on the Who Killed Haing Ngor webpage
In this episode, I’m speaking with two former gang-members. First there’s JC – from Long Beach and “TRG,” the Tiny Rascals Gang, one of LA’s most notorious Asian gangs. And I’m talking with Prosper, from Lowell, Massachusetts, and the East Coast wing of TRG, where they’re known as “Blue Rags.”
Each one was involved in a homicide, did time, and then got deported. Both are now living in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh. Each has extremely limited memories of his early childhood. But what they do remember is vivid.
JC: I remember, late at night my dad pulled me off the bed. And I remember falling off the bed and hitting my head on the bamboo slat floor. And then so much commotion was going on. Everybody was gathering some things. I hear bombs, I heard gunfire….
That’s JC. Some of his earliest memories are when his family fled western Battambang province for the Thai border in 1979, the year Vietnam invaded. He was six, going on seven.
JC: We hid in one of this hole[s] that we have found, from the shells. Spent the night in the hole. Woke up in the morning found out it was like a mass grave. That the hole was dug out - where they throw all the dead bodies in there. We didn't know because it was so pitch black we couldn't see inside.
Prosper, from Lowell, was born in the Khao-i-Dang refugee camp in Thailand in 1981. He has two memories. One was seeing his parents working in a rice field.
PROSPER: The second vivid memory for me is when I was on the airplane ride over to the United States. It was the first time I heard music. And having … headphones in my ears and the plane ride, really, you know, maybe made me remember that that moment - of just hearing music inside my ear on the way to America.
As admirable it may have been for the US to throw open its doors to hundreds of thousands of refugees from Indochina conflicts, the support dried up very quickly.
BILL HEROD: When you put people who don't speak English, in crowded inner-cities, on welfare, with minimal support, guidance, counseling, it doesn't work very well.
That’s Bill Herod, the founder of the Khmer Vulnerability Aide Organization, KVAO, which helps Cambodian deportees resettle in Cambodia. Since 2002, they’ve helped resettle 772 people.
HEROD: It works when local NGOs, local churches and so forth, get involved and you know, take responsibility, but many times these people were put in very crowded inner-city conditions, surrounded by violence and drugs and gangs and so forth. And since the parents didn't speak the language, they weren't able to provide much guidance.
It’s as if the refugee experience bred a generation of “lost boys.” And girls – but it’s predominantly young men and boys who are “jumped in” to gangs. That’s when a new gang member is beaten up by everyone else, as a form of initiation.
Looking back now, Prosper says he was in search of a role model that his father couldn't live up to.
PROSPER: I never really wanted to join a gang. Because back then I was involved with hip hop, I used to dance, I used to break dance and I was into music and things like that. But growing up [I was] with people who were in gangs and that was around gangs, as a child. And it was at the age of 17 that a friend, an older gentleman, who I looked up to was like, “Why don't you just join our gang. It’s already like you’re family. I’ve known you since you were a kid.” And you know, I was young and still searching for myself and I just agreed to like, “Yeah, why not?” The next day after I got, I got jumped in, I told my best friend that I made a mistake.
JC was that voice earlier who didn’t know people co me in different colors. He also admits, he was naïve enough that he didn’t know he was in a gang… for weeks, if not months.
His family had just moved to Long Beach. It began when his cousin, who was meant to be hanging out with him, left 15 year-old JC alone in a park.
JC: While I'm while I'm on the bench that's been like 15 guys approached me know me. I remember they asked me where I was from. And me not knowing that that was a gang term - like, What neighborhood you from?- I answered, “ I’m from Minnesota.” They go, “OK - You're not from California?” I said, “No, I’m from Minnesota. I just moved over here.” And they like talking to me. Then they asked me, “Well, you may want to go for a ride?”
I'm like, Well, I'm making new friends. I say, “Sure. Why not?”
They went for a ride in what turned out to be a stolen vehicle, leading to JC’s first arrest. He was released without charges.
JC: The next day later we went to the park again, and those guys saw me again. They go, “We like you.”
I say, “Why?”
“Well, because yesterday you didn't say anything.”
And so because I didn’t say anything to the cops, they respected me for it. I couldn't give any names because I didn’t know nobody’s name.
MPN: Looking back now, did they have tats? Did they look like a gang, in retrospect?
JC: Back then, it wasn’t about tattoos. It was about hair colors. They dyed their hair like reddish blond or golden blond. It was about hair colors… I didn’t even know it was a gang at first. I mean, I thought it was like some kind of club or some kind of just boys-and-girls hang out people. It wasn't until later on that I realized, Oh, these guys are gangs. I mean, because the only gang that I know about is New York. I mean, I've watched the movie called “The Warriors.” That's the only gang I ever heard about.
It went downhill from there. The Tiny Rascals soon adopted a much more macho posture – now with the baggy clothes and gang tattoos. They felt like they had to protect the Cambodian community from rival Black and Latino gangs. JC went from stealing cars and car parts to what would be his downfall: breaking into people’s houses.
One night, JC was ransacking a house while his friend was holding the homeowner at gunpoint.
JC: I heard a gun fire. And I looked outside and I see my friend was shooting at one of the men... Everybody ran - but the man died. So now from residential robbery, it leads to murder.
Prosper’s life followed a similar trajectory. TRG routinely got into fights with rival gangs, to which he brought knives or a baseball bat. He was 25 when he went to what was meant to be a perfectly ordinary birthday party. But an argument broke out between two members of TRG.
PROSPER: Things was too fast. Just one thing led to another, and without warning, you know, my co-defendant pulled a gun out and shot him.
* * *
Neither JC nor Prosper have any direct knowledge of the murder of Haing Ngor in 1996, by three members of another LA gang, the Oriental Lazy Boyz. JC was already in prison. Prosper lived on the other side of the country. But both had a sense of connection to him.
JC: I know who he was. I even met him. I met him in Long Beach. We was driving together and he parked - his car was next to mine. We looked at each other. He waved to me and I waved back to him… I recognized him. I knew who he was, he was in the movie. “The Killing Fields.”
MPN: So what was your reaction when you heard that he got killed?
JC: When and I heard he got killed? I was sad. I was sad because the fact that this man went through so much. He put Cambodia on the map with that movie. He put awareness out there. of what happened to us…. I mean, I mean, I was doing robbery. But he was one person that I would never rob, because of that. If I would rob a house that he was in there, I’d have walked back out.
Prosper thinks he was 7 or 8 years old when his dad decided it was time he learned some history.
PROSPER: My father took me to the library…. and went to the video section and we rented out “The Killing Fields” for the first time. And we went home and sat and watched the movie and that was how he explained to me you know, what he went through with my mother and things like that, during that horrific time. And in his own way, that was one of the best ways for him to explain to me what he went through. Because it wasn't until I was a full adult that I realized that he suffered from PTSD. And, you know, I would, I would go to wake him sometimes, because he was being called, and he would jump up, ready for action. And it always used to, you know, it always used to amaze me why he would react in such a fashion. I realize now that was PTSD.
Haing Ngor comments several times on what he calls “depression” in his memoir, A Cambodian Odyssey. How burdened he felt by his past. Had he lived, chances are he’d have learned along with the rest of us about the prevalence of PTSD among survivors of war.
* * *
JC got sentenced to 34 years to life. He had just turned 18. He did 30 years, then got deported in 2018. Doing time meant taking a hard look at himself.
JC: Because as a lifer in prison, you have to go to you have to take therapy classes. I took so many therapy classes, self-help therapy classes. I had a must have like 150 certificates. To the point where I started off taking classes and ended up teaching classes.
JC did more than that. He worked as youth counselor, speaking with groups of at-risk teens who were brought into the prison for special programs. And he just kept going.
JC: I don't drink but I went to Alcoholics Anonymous. And so I was asked, “You don't drink at all. We have no record of you have any kind of alcohol problem. So why did you call it Alcoholics Anonymous?”
And I said, “Sir, I may not have an alcoholic tissue addiction I said but I do have a gang lifestyle addiction.” I said, addiction is still addiction.
So I go to AA, I may not be alcoholic, but I may have friends or family members that are alcoholic and and taking this class will allow me to understand what they go through and how to help them.
And they go, “Oh, wow. Wow, we didn't think about that way.” I had to. Any self-help class in here I'm going to take because I know it's going to benefit me one way or the other. Parenting class. Well, I'm not a parent when I was in prison. I'm a parent now. But because of those classes, I know how to treat my son. I know how to take care my wife. Everything I learned now, it’s because of prison.
Prosper got 15 years to life, for second-degree murder. He says he took the rap for his buddy with the gun because he didn’t want to be known as a snitch, either within TRG or in prison. He says he’s not the same person he was in 2006, when he went to that birthday party.
PROSPER: Well, I matured because, you know, I wanted to better myself. I really analyzed why we you know, what led me up to the point that I was at, and I was facing life in prison, and I was determined to make something and to learn about myself and to educate myself as opposed to just not doing enough that and withering away in prison because I had a main goal was to return back to my children.
Prosper’s children were 4 and 5 years old at the time. His kids weren’t his only motivators. It was also prison old-timers, the OG’s.
PROSPER: Some of the old guys, who had been through all the bullshit, they had seen the stabbings and all that - they give you a lot of their experiences, and you learn from them. That’s one thing I did well, was learn from other people’s mistakes. When they say get go get education, my first year in the maximum prison, I got my GED. You know, I'm saying I help other people who were taking college courses with their homework. So that got me into the education field where I eventually had gotten myself into those courses. Also I went to college in prison. I've earned two scholarships while I was in prison, one from Tufts University for an Associate's degree, and one from Boston College will for a Bachelor's degree. And if I didn't make parole, I would have I would have earned my degree with Boston College.
I reached out by email to fact-check that, and a Boston College professor who taught in Prosper in prison confirmed it for me within minutes, adding that he was one of their best students. I’ll put a link to the Boston College Prison Education program on the episode 3 webpage. Prosper was thinking of majoring in sociology or psychology - he hadn’t decided yet. But when parole came around so did his citizenship question.
PROSPER: I initially thought that it was a US citizen because of the fact that, you know, both my parents became US citizens.
That wasn’t the case. This is typical of refugee communities, where new arrivals are simply unaware of or don’t understand the law. JC’s parents were like that too. And think about it – even if you spoke and read English well, in the 80’s and into the mid 90’s, you couldn't just look up the answer to complicated citizenship questions on the internet.
Prosper’s father had become a naturalized citizen before Prosper was 18. His mother wasn’t naturalized until he was 20. And that’s all it took.
The law at the time said that for people born before 1983, like Prosper, both his parents had to gain citizenship by the time he was 18, so that he could, too. But his mom had completely unknowingly missed a deadline that would have allowed her son to become American.
PROSPER: I did 15 and a half years. When I got paroled, ICE came to grab me right away from prison. And I did six months in detention before I got deported. So I never got a chance to go see my family, or touch the streets without shackles.
MPN: You lined up to remarkably resilient people for me to interview, but did you line up the A+ students for me, I mean, do people rebound as well as JC and Prosper?
BILL HEROD: Well, we got people who were willing to talk with you, of course.
Here’s Bill Herod again from KVAO.
BILL HEROD: But I think they're representative of guys who are trying to make it work. JC of course has been back - has been in Cambodia for several years. Prsoper is quite new. He’s been there less than a year. We do have, we have a dozen people in prison for crimes committed, allegedly committed in Cambodia. And we work with a group of people who've come back who have problems with substance abuse. So there are all kinds of I mean, with 772 there's a wide variety of experiences. But I think JC and prosper are good examples.
By now you’ve probably figured that both Prosper and JC are determined to make the most out of their second chance at freedom. They are highly motivated human beings.
JC’s gotten married to a Cambodian woman, and has two small sons. He and Prosper have both gotten work in Phnom Penh teaching English.
Still - moving to Cambodia definitely takes some adjustment. I’m not using JC or Prosper’s legal names by request, because there’s still stigma attached to being an ex-con. And the injustice of deportation still stings.
Prosper’s son, who was 5 when he went to prison? He’s in the US Army now and just completed his first tour of duty overseas. Prosper’s daughter is in college.
PROSPER: I consider myself an American and for me to get deported back to a country that I've never stepped foot in, because I was born in a refugee camp, I think that's kind of unfair, because family that I do know and love are over there. And - it hit me hard, but it hit my son harder, and it hit my daughter hard, because of the fact that they couldn't believe that their country would send their father away from them, especially for my son who is fighting for their country.
JC: And I believe that the mean that everybody is entitled to have to have a second chance, especially if they show signs of rehabilitation or taking responsibility for themselves.
JC and Prosper are unlikely to ever be allowed to legally return to the United States.
One thing I really need to point out is that it’s not just people involved in homicides or other serious crimes who get deported. The bar is much, much lower than that. Here’s Bill Herod.
BILL HEROD: A non-citizen can be deported for life for a felony conviction and under immigration law. A felony conviction can be can consist of two misdemeanors…. If you're caught with marijuana for personal use, once, that could be a misdemeanor, if it happens, again, that could be a felony, and you could be deported for life.
There is a bill before Congress called “The New Way Forward Act” that aims to reform the contentious, and highly politicized issue of US immigration. As written, it gives judges the discretion to review “removal” in individual cases – something that could have benefited Prosper and JC, who became assets to their communities. It was introduced in the House in 2021, and is now “in committee.” So there’s a long way to go before - maybe - it becomes law.
If there’s one thing that’s clear, Prosper and JC are survivors – not just of gangs and prison, but in their own way, of the Khmer Rouge. They were the cataclysm that started it all and made refugees out of their parents. My hunch is that each will make a life for himself in Cambodia- the first time in decades that neither has been under threat. JC gets the last word.
JC : Put it this way. I have never felt so much freedom until I'm here… I don't have to look over my shoulder. I don't have to find out who's following me. I don't have to find out, who's gonna hit me up: What gang am I from? Or I don't have to worry about my enemies trying to come try to jump me. I don't worry about that here. In Long Beach? I worried every time I come out of the house.
* * *
Thank you for listening. My name is M.P. Nunan. Remember, this is a crowd-sourced podcast – an experiment in journalism.
If you knew Haing Ngor personally and would like to contribute – even just an interesting anecdote - please get in touch. If you know any details about his murder you think are relevant, please get in touch. The best way to reach me is to email whokilledhaingngor@gmail.com
Haing is Ha I ng
Ngor is N G or
Thanks again.