On Saturday, February 26, Boalt Hall’s Asian Law Journal held a symposium, “Exiled Once Again,” to discuss the mass deportation of Southeast Asian refugees from the United States. Recent changes in U.S. immigration law have made thousands of refugees eligible for deportation back to their war-torn countries, and many have already been deported.
The symposium brought together well-known attorneys, community activists and legal scholars to discuss the harmful impact of these deportations on the Southeast Asian community. Two panels convened, one to discuss the political and historical contexts of deportation policy in the U.S., while the second addressed issues of community activism and education. The event also included a short screening of the new documentary, Sentenced Home, which follows several refugees from birth in Cambodia to their unwilling return there decades later.