PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia leaders joined a chorus of voices calling for the release of a Philly man held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a Western Pennsylvania detention center.
“He belongs here in the city that shaped him, not in the detention center or on a plane to a country he does not know,” said Councilman Nicholas O’Rourke of Sereyrath Van, also known as “One.”
O’Rourke, along with fellow Councilmembers Rue Landau and Curtis Jones Jr., as well as several immigration activists, called on ICE Thursday to release Van from the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania, where he has been held for seven months.
Moments earlier, Council passed a resolution calling for Van’s release and for the state legislature to champion welcoming policies for immigrants. Van, the son of refugees from the Cambodian genocide in the 1970s, was born in Thailand and has lived in Philadelphia since he was about four years old.
He has been fighting the government’s attempts to deport him to Cambodia or Thailand since 2021. His lawyer has said Thailand would not take him, and that Van would face torture if sent to Cambodia.
Following the vote, O’Rourke and fellow Councilmembers Rue Landau and Curtis Jones Jr. joined immigration rights activists outside Council chambers.
“Tens of thousands of our neighbors are directly impacted by unjust detention and deportation policies,” he said. “This is not an isolated issue.”
Landau also called Van’s detention unjust, calling for ICE to release him. “He should not be detained there. He should not be sent to Cambodia, a place where he has never lived,” she said. “He belongs here in Philadelphia with his community.”
A drug dealing conviction when he was young blocked Van’s path to citizenship. He later served prison time on another conviction.
Jones, however, said Philadelphia is a city of second chances. “We are all for one because people deserve a second chance,” he said.
Supporters, like Van Sam of nonprofit Vietlead, said the threat of deportation is a punishment that never goes away.
“Punishment for these folks … looks like the anxious late night call about their upcoming check in with ICE, their sleepless night that follows the 13-hour work day the next morning because they need to make money to renew their work permit every year,” he said. “ICE continues the trauma that they experienced growing up in refugee camps.”