Photos: The forgotten story of Cambodia’s Lost Boyz in America

Welcomed to the U.S. as children, deported as adults

Bobby is arrested for assault at a party on Chicago’s south side. Chicago, 1993. In 1990s Uptown Chicago, about 30–40 Cambodian teenagers had formed a gang, known as the Loco Boyz, in response to attacks from well established neighborhood gangs.

Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal regime devastated Cambodia. Millions were killed, and an exodus of refugees left first for neighboring Thailand, and then further abroad to France, Australia, and the United States. In the 1980s, the U.S. government helped settle 150,000 Cambodians in American cities, where families were often placed in poor, inner-city neighborhoods hardly equipped to handle an influx of outsiders. Hundreds of Cambodian boys joined or formed gangs in response to their new surroundings.

Photographer Stuart Isett started documenting these communities, in Uptown Chicago and elsewhere, in the early 1990s. Though not typical of Cambodians as a group, many of his subjects were gang members. These young men had witnessed atrocities back home as young children, or were born shortly thereafter in Thai refugee camps, and most understood their “permanent resident” status in the U.S. as equivalent to citizenship. But by the late 1990s, many were facing the prospect of deportation back to Cambodia—a consequence of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act signed into law in 1996. The new legislation brought big changes to U.S. immigration policy, allowing deportation of permanent residents convicted of misdemeanor crimes — even retroactively.

In the 2000s hundreds of men were deported to Cambodia, leaving wives and families behind in the United States, made to start over in a foreign land. Once there, language and cultural barriers—and the trauma of separating from loved ones—collided with Phnom Penh’s toxic mix of cheap drugs and poor social services, leaving many of these “Lost Boyz” to fend for themselves. Isett’s photographs are a glimpse into the personal consequences of the Clinton administration’s reactionary immigration policy, which finds an unsettling parallel in the rhetoric of the current presidential election.

All photographs © Stuart Isett, 1992–2009

Bobby goes swimming in Lake Michigan. Chicago, 1992.

The OLBs (Orginal Loco Boyz) hang out in an alley while a mother and son make clothes for family members on the back deck of their home in an Argyle Street apartment building where mainly Cambodian refugee families reside. Chicago, 1992.

Wearing Buddhist amulets and a Chicago White Sox baseball hat, Nouen hangs out at the corners of Argyle and Glenwood Streets on Chicago’s Northside while a police car patrols. All four buildings on the corner are filled with Cambodian families—this is the heart of the OLB’s (Original Loco Boyz) turf. Chicago, 1992.

Bobby and his 16-year-old girlfriend who was six months pregnant at the time. Chicago, 1993.

Thy leaps into Lake Michigan. Chicago, 1992.

Using a homemade, ‘jail house’ tattoo gun, Gino makes Loco Boyz gang tattoos while Bobby (left) and Tino (right) look on. Chicago, 1993.

Ricky and his girlfriend outside his apartment complex in Uptown. Chicago, 1992.

Gino loads his 38 calibre hand gun. Born on April 9th, 1975, one week before the Khmer Rouge took over, Gino’s family fled Cambodia in 1979. Gino served 6 months as a youth offender in California for a gang shooting and was a member of the ‘Asian Boyz’, one the the most violent Cambodian gangs on the west coast. Bakersfield, CA 1993.

Gino in the California desert, Bakersfield, 1993.

Ya says she would rather die than see her only surviving son sent back to Cambodia. Federal Way, WA, 2007. Her 31-year-old son, Chhoeuth, escaped with his family from Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge in 1979 after three of his siblings had died from starvation. Living as refugees in Chicago, both he and his mother suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Chhoeuth attempted suicide twice as a teenager, but was never involved in gangs or violent crime. In 1999, living in Tacoma, he was arrested for domestic violence, his first offense for which he served one year in jail. Stripped of his green card upon release, he received a work authorization paper but when he went to see immigration officers in early 2007 to renew it, he was immediately arrested and ordered for deportation. Now waiting at the privately run Pacific NW Detention Center, he will be deported within 90 days.

Many, 31, was 8 years old when he arrived in the U.S. in 1984. Convicted of first degree robbery in 1994, he served almost three years in prison before his green card was stripped with the passage of IIRAIRA. Seattle, 2007.

(Top) ‘Popeye’ and his Khmer gang tattoos in the ‘hood’ an area behind the Russian embassy where many deportees have settled in Phnom Penh. 2006. (Bottom) Moe, 38, bathes in the river behind his small home in Battambang Province, Cambodia. Deported in 2004, Moe moved straight to the countryside to avoid the influences of drugs and other deportees in Phnom Penh. 2008.

1: ‘Chu’, a 34-year-old deportee from Sacramento, California, shoots crystal meth in a Phnom Penh public restroom. Cheap drugs and a lack of family support networks have led many deportees to start using heavy drugs as a way to cope with their new lives in a foreign land. Some deal drugs to foreign tourists to support their habits. 2007. 2: ‘Dicer’, aka Daved, 33, working a night job at a data entry company where his English language skills helped him get hired. Originally from Long Beach, Pin was a leading gang member and member of the Crazy Brothers Clan. 2006.

Tuy, aka ‘KK’, runs a breakdancing class for street kids in his apartment in the ‘Hood’ in Phnom Penh. Teaching English, and raising money for the kids through break dancing shows, KK has turned his life around since being deported, and feels like a father to the hundreds of young kids in his Tiny Toones program. 2006.

‘Sharp’, 27, from Bakersfield, California, left behind a wife and four children when he was deported to Cambodia. Addicted to meth and a former dealer himself, Sharp had quit drugs and was trying to get his life in order by learning to read and write Khmer when he disappeared after just one class. Phnom Penh, 2006.

‘Youngster’, a Cambodian deportee from the USA, at the funeral of his friend Chan, aka Rascal, who committed suicide at the age of 34. Chan had been in Cambodia for a year since his deportation from the United States. A full day, maybe two, had passed since Chan, who was from California, scribbled a note to his family, knotted a rope around his neck, and ended his terse, tormented stay in Cambodia. The note to his mother read: “You won’t have to worry about me ever again.” 2007.

42 year old Chhuon, aka ‘Chu’, was deported back to Cambodia from his hometown of San Diego in 2006 after serving time for selling marijuana. Chhuon returned to the village his family fled in 1979 after the Vietnamese invaded and drove out the Khmer Rouge. His last memories of Cambodia were working the same fields for the Khmer Rouge when he was a young boy. He now lives with his 50-year-old sister who stayed in Cambodia after 1979, making roughly $2/day working in the rice fields with other villagers. 2008.