U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained a man who attended a check-in meeting on Wednesday after living in Providence for nearly 50 years, triggering a flurry of support letters from the city’s mayor, city council and Rhode Island’s governor.
Relatives of Chansareth Hong say the 50-year-old father had been attending required meetings with ICE for years before the agency detained him and transported him to the Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls on Wednesday.
If Hong is deported, his family would need to find another primary caretaker for his elderly mother and nine-year-old son, who is non-verbal and autistic, according to Vanessa Hong, Chansareth’s niece. The boy’s mother died last year.
“We’re going to do everything we can because I’m sure the first thing he’d think about is hoping that his son is safe and in good hands,” Hong said.
Chansareth Hong immigrated from Cambodia to the U.S. in 1978 as an infant, according to his family. His immigration status was complicated by drug convictions he received as a teenager in 1997.
An immigration judge ordered Hong’s deportation in 1999. But the order was halted due to protections under the U.N. Convention Against Torture, according to Jenni Nguyen, a community organizer from the Providence Youth Student Movement who Hong’s family has authorized to speak on their behalf.
Hong has been in immigration “limbo” ever since, Nguyen said, living and working in the U.S. under a fragile form of legal status that requires him to check in frequently with immigration officials.
Prior to his detainment during a meeting at ICE’s Warwick office on Wednesday, 13 members of the Providence City Council wrote a letter to ICE stressing his importance as a family caretaker. The letter said Hong had appeared for every required ICE check-in without a single absence in 28 years since his criminal conviction.
He has had no additional criminal cases in Rhode Island’s state or federal courts since then, according to public docket information. Family members said they are not aware of any offenses that could have triggered a change in his legal status.
When contacted by Ocean State Media, an anonymous ICE spokesperson mentioned Hong’s drug convictions.
“Chansareth Hong is a criminal illegal alien from Cambodia,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “The Trump Administration is utilizing all lawful options to carry out the largest deportation operation in history, just as President Trump promised. Anyone who has been deported received full due process.”
Nguyen said Hong’s legal team has filed a petition in federal court seeking to stay the deportation. She said he is one of many southeast Asian immigrants experiencing a sudden change in immigration status during Trump’s second term.
“This sounds crazy but there are thousands of people in this limbo where ICE knows that they have been in compliance,” Nguyen said. “But it’s because there is no pathway to citizenship. There is no pathway to really get out of that status of limbo.”
In Providence’s West End, home to a community of Cambodian immigrants, Nguyen said the deportations have not happened quietly.
“The temples are very much feeling the effect of the community members being deported, and the grocery stores, and the restaurants,” she said. “People are seeing that their community members are no longer around.”
