Letter to My Detained Family — Nathaniel Tan
ICE raids over the last year have resulted in the largest deportations of Cambodian refugees in US history, devastating communities by removing parents, siblings, friends, children, and community leaders. Currently, there are over 60 community members in detention facing the imminent threat of deportation. For these individuals, a gubernatorial pardon represents one of the only available opportunities to remain with their families in this country.
Each week, Asian Americans Advancing Justice — Asian Law Caucus will be posting an open letter or story from Cambodian community members highlighting how a pardon from Governor Brown would impact an individual or their family. You can urge Governor Brown to pardon these community members by signing our petition at bit.ly/PardonRefugees.
This letter comes from Nathaniel Tan, an Ethnic Studies educator and community organizer with Asian Prisoner Support Committee.
To my 63 Cambodian refugee family members sitting in Krome ICE Detention Center,
I love you all so much. My heart aches every time I hear an ICE raid has taken place, that a family had their loved ones stripped from their arms, that a plane has taken people off to a country they’ve never been to before. The refugee, and the Cambodian community specifically, has experienced too much heartache. I want you all to know that I will not stop fighting for you. I yearn for the day that we can all be free — free from incarceration, free from ICE detention, free from deportation, and free to live a life without fear — free to live our lives full of uninterrupted love.
In these dark times I think about the wars in Southeast Asia — I think about Operation Menu, where President Nixon green lighted the carpet bombing of Cambodia. All the civilian casualties, the lives lost to genocide, and the lives torn apart by incarceration and ICE detention, provides enough evidence to believe America has no conscience.
Did they think that the children of war would make it out unscathed? Did they stop to think about how they normalized violence? From the Killing Fields to the United States ghettos, did they know there is no difference between a gunshot in Cambodia and a gunshot in East Oakland? Did they know poverty feels the same in the refugee camp as it does in dilapidated section 8 housing? I truly believe the United States suffers from extreme voyeurism. They enjoy human suffering. They enjoy playing hero to the problems they create. Thousands of us have dealt with the pain brought on by racist and xenophobic policies, and we have to depend on the people who created those policies to save us. Our suffering is their profit. Our suffering and their saviorism legitimizes them. I call bullshit! Our livelihoods have been in the hands of the wrong people for too long. Our lives are not to be messed with. Our freedoms are no ones to take!
Decades of racialized law-and-order policies, decades of anti-immigrant and anti-refugee policies, and decades of overfunding police forces, homeland security, and ICE has led us to depend on the scarcely given pardons only given to the exceptional few for sanctuary, for safety, for freedom. I believe you all need to be free. I believe we all deserve to be free.
The donut shop workers, the gangsters, the construction workers, the Lyft and Uber drivers, the mechanics, the carpenters, the unemployed, the stay-at-home parent, the under-the-table worker, the line cook — we all deserve to be free, because we have been denied freedom for too long.
Selective exceptionalism does not allow all of us to be free. And all of us need to be free. I am not looking to fight for the exceptional few, I am looking to fight for all of us because surviving US imperialism, racism, and generational poverty makes us all exceptional.
I dream of the day where I don’t hear about a someone getting picked up by ICE, where I don’t have to share a petition to get someone pardoned, when I don’t have to show up at an immigration rally, when I don’t have to create an exceptional story to justify someone’s humanity. But until then, I will keep on working, I will keep on protesting, I will keep on writing, I will keep on fighting.
I tell my family members about you all. I tell my students about you all. I tell them about how much I love you all — that I don’t need to have met you or know your story to relentlessly fight for you all. I tell them love will set us free. I tell my family and students to think about the person they love most in this world. I ask them what would you do for them to get them free? I ask them to imagine if they loved in everyone in this world that way. Imagine how much more free we would all be. That is the type of love I have for you all. A love that will do anything to set you free.
We will one day get to hold our children knowing it won’t be the last time. We will one day get to mean it when we say, “see you tomorrow.” We will one day leave our homes knowing confidently we will return to our partners, our parents, our pets, and our children. We will get to go to our favorite sports games. We will walk our children down the wedding aisles. We will get to close our eyes in our own beds and wake up knowing we will be in the presence of our loved ones. We will show the world that our love for each other is greater than any cage, cell, concrete, or prison bar.
I am certain, we will see those days in our lifetime. My fight has always been rooted in my love for my community. As long as there is love in my heart, I will always fight for you all.
Until freedom family, until freedom.
Nathaniel (Nate) Tan
