By Chris Decherd | The Associated Press
Growing up in a suburban Los Angeles ghetto, Samphos often dreamed of Cambodia, the homeland he fled as a 6-year-old with his parents to escape civil war. He imagined himself running through Cambodian savannas, swimming in rivers and wandering through jungles watching tigers and elephants.
Last June, he was back in Cambodia — but against his will. He was brought back on a U.S. government plane in handcuffs, chained to five other men.
Samphos, who asked that his family name not be used, was in the first group of six Cambodians to be returned under a U.S. law allowing the deportation of resident aliens convicted of crimes in America.
About 1,400 such Cambodians are scheduled to be returned over the next several years, although only 36 have made the trip so far. Most have been single men in their 20s and 30s but there was one 80-year-old man and several with mental disorders.
Like the 27-year-old Samphos, the other deportees had lived nearly all their lives in America but never got around to filling out the paperwork to become U.S. citizens.
Coming to Cambodia has brought them to a land they barely understand, where poverty is deep and widespread and whose conservative social mores are a mystery.
“Starting over ain’t easy,” Samphos says in a distinctly Californian twang. “Man, the only way to kiss a girl around here is to marry her.”
For all practical purposes the deportees are Americans — just listen to Samphos’ accent and look at the dragon tattoo on his muscular left arm — but legally they are Cambodians.
Many of those being sent back were children during the Khmer Rouge’s 1975–79 killing fields, when all of Cambodia became a work camp in a horrific experiment with radical communism. Most of the rest are the offspring of other Cambodians who fled the regime, which was blamed for 1.7 million deaths from disease, starvation, overwork and execution.
Tens of thousands of Cambodians settled in the United States in the early 1980s, in places like Los Angeles, Seattle, Houston, Chicago, Minneapolis and Lowell, Mass. Many became American citizens; others did not — officially remaining foreigners.
Normally, provisions for the deportation of foreign criminals from the United States are included in extradition treaties Washington has with most nations. But no such treaty exists with Cambodia and it wasn’t until last March that the Cambodian government finally agreed to accept deportees, after five years of U.S. pressure.
“This policy creates problems for Cambodia and the government,” says Brig. Gen. Meach Sophana, the national immigration police chief.
“We are concerned how these people will integrate without causing social problems,” he adds, referring to worries that the returnees will go back to lives of crime.
Crimes committed by the returnees range from murder and armed robbery to public indecency and habitual drunk driving. Most speak Khmer, Cambodia’s language, but don’t read or write it. Many have relatives in Cambodia but have little in common with them.
On landing in Phnom Penh, Samphos spent 12 days in detention before he was picked up by distant relatives. Officially, he was undergoing orientation, but in reality he and his relatives were being squeezed for bribes.
“All returnees interviewed on this subject report being approached by low-level Immigration Department officials for payments ranging from a few dollars for various privileges to several hundreds of dollars for early release,” says Bill Herod, an American who heads a program trying to help the returnees with their transition into Cambodian life.
Samphos spent seven years in jail for taking part in a 1995 robbery of a jewelry store in Texas, says Lt. Col. Chharn Vutha, a senior immigration official.
Free now and living in Battambang, Samphos is at times exhilarated by his evolving new life. Most often he is bored and short of money. And it’s sinking in that he cannot return to the United States.
He bathes in a roofless, wooden shack by pouring rain water from a basin over his head, and drinks “strange Coca-Cola that tastes not the same.”
He also marvels at the shroud of darkness and utter stillness that blankets the provincial capital after sunset. There are few streetlights and people tend to stay at home at night.
His friend there, Vanna, who lived near Oakland, Calif., was sent to Cambodia after serving time for shooting a rival gang member.
Vanna, who also asked that his family name not be published, has found a Cambodian girlfriend and has seen her almost daily for six weeks. He says she hasn’t allowed him to kiss her, though. “This is Cambodia,” he says.
Vanna and Samphos are planning to move to Phnom Penh, the capital, because there is little wage work in Battambang, a rice-growing hub in the northwest.
The returnees tend to have a good time during their first few weeks in Cambodia, getting to know relatives and hanging out at nightclubs. Troubles come later. There have been brushes with the law, scuffles with strangers and complications with girlfriends.
“They initially conduct themselves as being perceived as Cambodian tourists, but it’s a difficult psychological adjustment when they start trying to find a place to live and a job,” Herod says.
Cambodia is one of Asia’s poorest countries and more than 36 percent of its 11 million citizens live on less than 50 cents a day. Jobs are scarce, and those that do exist — in garment factories, for example — pay $40 to $45 a month.
Not even 10 of the 36 returnees have jobs, Herod says. A few have meager personal savings but most are dependent on funds from family still in the United States.
Samphos says the idyllic Cambodia of his dreams won’t be part of the hard-scrabble Cambodia of his future.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” he says.
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