Strangers in their homeland: the Khmerican Cambodians Trump deported
For many deportees, the United States had been home for decades. Now, they struggle to adjust to life in the country of their birth
After four months in Phnom Penh, Sothy Kum still has more bad days than good. Nights, he says, are especially hard – when the tears come and he feels every bit of the 14,000km (8,700 miles) separating him from his family and the small Wisconsin town he calls home.
In Wisconsin, Sothy Kum, 43, has a wife, Lisa, whom he met in 2009. He has a business he shares with her, which was their livelihood, and a house in a cul-de-sac, which is nothing like the one-bedroom flat he sleeps in now in a neighbourhood he can’t name, in a city he has never known.
“Nearby the temple” is what he tells people when they ask where he lives.
Cambodian ‘Donut King’ who came full circle
Then, early one morning last October, US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement came to Sothy Kum’s door to take him away. He was detained for six months, though he was not charged with any crime.
In April, he and 42 others were shackled and loaded onto a plane bound for Cambodia – the largest single group of deportees in the history of US-Cambodia relations.
For 37 years, Sothy Kum had never left the United States – not since his family arrived in 1981, after the refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines, after fleeing the murderous Khmer Rouge on foot when he was just two.
