STOCKTON, Calif. — Any day now 40-year-old Thy Tuy could face deportation to Cambodia. There’s just one problem: he has never been there.
The Stockton man’s family fled Cambodia before he was born.
"The Khmer Rouge were committing genocide, and so that's why we fled Cambodia during that time,” said Tuy’s older brother, Ken Tuy.
Thy Tuy was born in a refugee camp in Thailand in 1983 and then brought to the U.S. when he was a year old.
His entire family resettled in Stockton, becoming lawful permanent residents – also known as “Green Card holders” – and, eventually, U.S. citizens.
Thy Tuy, however, never got citizenship. He fell into the wrong crowd, his family said, and began abusing drugs.
“That time I was heavily on drugs. I did a lot of crystal meth,” said Tuy.
ABC10 spoke with him by phone from the Mesa Verde ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Processing Facility in Bakersfield, where ICE is holding him pending deportation to Cambodia.
“Myself, I never stepped foot in Cambodia,” Tuy said.
So, what landed him here?
“It's not good. It's not good at all,” Tuy said. “It was just a bad decision. It was just stupid… I feel so bad.”
In 2006, Tuy — then 22 — and his 19-year-old girlfriend tied up a Stockton family in their home, robbed them of $500 and abducted the 16-year-old daughter at knife-point, prompting a statewide Amber Alert. CHP stopped their car heading south on I-5 just before the Grapevine. The 16-year-old girl wasn't hurt.
“When I look back, part of my growth is putting myself in their shoes,” Tuy said. “I wouldn't want nobody to do that to my family… I feel so wrong for doing it, and it hurts me to the point where it changed me completely.”
A judge sentenced Tuy to 20 years in state prison. He served just over 16 years, a shortened sentence due to good behavior. By all accounts, Tuy turned his life around with mental health treatment, anger management classes and other programs. He also held a job and got his GED.
In 2022, just days before Tuy’s release from state prison in Corcoran, he learned he would be transferred straight to ICE custody. Since Tuy wasn’t a citizen, his serious crimes flagged his case for deportation.
Tuy’s brother Ken told ABC10 he doesn’t think that is fair.
“For the legal residents here who’s not citizens, they can get sentenced and do their time and then they get a second punishment and get deported on top of that, which isn't fair, in my opinion,” Ken Tuy said.
Thy Tuy spent several months in ICE detention, trying without an attorney to plead his case before a judge.
“I told the judge, my entire family — siblings, cousins — everybody's here,” Tuy said. “For them to send me back to Cambodia, (from) where my people fled, like, that doesn’t make sense to me.”
The judge, however, was unmoved, Tuy said. Discouraged, Tuy signed a deportation waiver, with the hope it would get him out of detention and back to his family.
It did. He got out on supervised parole on Halloween 2022 and spent a little more than a year making up for lost time with his family, including his now 19-year-old son, Troy, and 84-year-old mother. While out, Tuy lived with and helped care for her.
“Since he got out, he's doing everything he can to keep his life straight and do everything he needs to do in order to have a brighter future here,” Ken Tuy said.
However, in November 2023, ICE took him back into custody, saying he’ll be deported to Cambodia sometime in January.
"It’s heartbreaking,” Tuy’s brother said. “If they do send him there, he's not going to be able to survive there... He doesn't know anybody. He's not fluent enough in the language to get by."
U.S. Representative Judy Chu pointed out that Tuy is not alone.
“Right now, there are so many deportation orders; there are 16,000 deportation orders, and this is hanging over the heads of all these refugees,” Chu told ABC10 during a Zoom interview.
This California congresswoman introduced a federal bill that would help Tuy and other Southeast Asian refugees who arrived in the U.S. before 2008, many due to conditions stemming from the Vietnam War.
“There were those who got into trouble with the law. They served their time, but the cruelty is that when they came out, there was an automatic order for deportation,” Rep. Chu said. “And many of these people were young or never even were in their country of origin.”
ABC10 asked Chu to respond to people who hold the opinion that the law is the law; if a non-citizen breaks the law, then deportation is just part of the process.
"Well, remember that these are people who paid the price; they did their time,” Chu said. “If we actually believe in rehabilitation, if we believe that people can become better versions of themselves, then we should give people like him the ability to plead their case and to say that they have so much to contribute, still, to this country, rather than deport them.”
Tuy’s older brother Ken is a Stockton police officer, who is therefore tasked with enforcing the law. ABC10 asked him the same question.
“I'm all for you doing your time and serving the time you were sentenced,” Ken Tuy said, “but nobody should get punished twice for the same crime that they did.”
Working with advocacy groups, the family has filed a request with ICE to pause Tuy’s deportation and have his case re-opened.
Furthermore, the Stockton organization Empowering Marginalized Asian Communities (EMAC), which serves the local Southeast Asian community, is also rallying behind Thy Tuy and demanding his release.
Donald Donaire is EMAC’s director of programming and advocacy. They say if the worst-case scenario plays out — if Tuy is deported to Cambodia — then EMAC will connect Tuy with a group in that country that helps people in Tuy’s situation.
“Asian Prisoner Support Committee has started something called the New Life Program, where they have folks who have been deported in the past and they accept those who have been deported to kind of help them,” Donaire said. “Because like Tuy and other folks who have been deported, that is not their native country. They don't speak the language. They probably don't have family or community that can help accept them into their new country.”
Advocates point out that Tuy has not had an easy life. In 1989, Tuy and his brother Ken survived the 1989 Cleveland Elementary School shooting in Stockton. Considered one of the nation’s first and worst school shootings at the time, 24-year-old Patrick Purdy shot and killed five students and hurt 32 others. Notably, his victims were mostly Southeast Asian refugees.
The Tuys’ only sister, Thong Tuon, made a tearful plea to ABC10.
“My brother Thy was not born in Cambodia and he served his time,” she said. “He should be free. He should be able to stay in this country, united with the family.”
We asked Tuy what he plans on doing if he does end up getting deported.
“I'm going to do my best, I guess. I'm going to just be optimistic,” Tuy said. “I'm 40-years-old and I’ve lived here for over 38 years. I'm facing deportation to a place where my people are from. I don’t know, it's a scary situation, and I'm just hoping that it doesn't happen.”
His close-knit family members say they want Tuy to have a second chance.
“Whatever he needs, we're willing to help, and we're just there for him,” Ken Tuy said.
Tuy’s 19-year-old son Troy had these words of encouragement for his dad: “Just keep pushing. Stay strong.”
So what comes next?
Two things could happen any day now.
ICE could go ahead and deport Thy Tuy to Cambodia.
Or ICE could decide to grant the family’s request and pause his deportation. From there, the family would try to re-open the case.
If Congresswoman Chu’s bill does pass, it would apply to people like Tuy even if he has already been deported; it would be a legal pathway back to the U.S.
What about the victims of his crime back in 2006?
ABC10 reached out to multiple family members through phone, email and social media, saying we’re doing a story on this man convicted of hurting their family and we’d like to include their perspective in the story if they want to share it. However, ABC10 did not hear back from them.
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