PHILADELPHIA — In a victory in the fight against deportation of immigrant workers, Anou Vongbandith was released on bond Oct. 29. He had been held at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center near Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, since Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested him here July 26 on his way to work.
“We did what I was told impossible,” his wife, Anh Vongbandith, told the media, expressing gratitude for the outpouring of support they received from working people across the city. That was especially true in the Germantown neighborhood where they own the Das Good Café, she said. This included a demonstration of hundreds in front of the restaurant, a letter-writing campaign and raising tens of thousands of dollars that helped pay Anou’s bond.
Immigration Judge Richard Bailey ruled that Anou wasn’t a flight risk or a danger to the community.
The fight for political asylum Anou had been waging will now continue in public and in the courts.
Anou’s green card was taken away when he and his wife were accused of child abuse by their then 15-year-old daughter in 2008. She had raised the charge in retribution after Anh accused a 21-year-old man their daughter was seeing of statutory rape.
After their three children were placed in foster care, a result of the unproven charges, Anou agreed to a plea deal to get them home. This is now being used by ICE to try and deport him back to Laos. The daughter has long denied any abuse ever happened. Anou says his attorney never told him that accepting the plea deal would place him in violation of immigration law.
Anou, 50, came to the U.S. when he was 5, fleeing Laos with his parents “because of the impact of the Vietnam War and war throughout Southeast Asia,” he told the Militant at the café Nov. 1.
The for-profit Moshannon Valley Processing Center, which can hold 1,876 prisoners, is the largest ICE facility in the Northeast. “It’s really a concentration camp,” Anou said.
He was quartered with some 75 other detainees in horrible conditions. “They try to break you,” he said.
“Everybody I met there were good people,” he said. “I would say that 75% of those held there were arrested for something that happened in their lives many years ago, and dug up through some database. When I was pulled over, I thought it was for a traffic stop.”
Anou added that a lot of prisoners “have no means of support. I want to help raise funds for them. For people who arrived here when they were children, their birth countries are being forced by the U.S. government to take them back.”
Just days after Anou arrived at the prison, Chinese-born Chaofeng Ge, 32-years-old, committed suicide by hanging himself in a shower room. Ge was arrested and accused of using an incorrect credit card number to purchase gift cards at a CVS store. The cops turned him over to ICE.
“His death happened in my area of the prison and everyone knew,” said Anou. “The suicide note was translated. It said he was so very sorry to his family and friends.”
Abrego García in the same prison
In another wing of the prison, Anou said, Kilmar Abrego García, the 30-year-old apprentice sheet metal worker and member of SMART Local 100 from Beltsville, Maryland, is being held. He has now been imprisoned for more than 200 days, both in the U.S. and in the CECOT ultra-high security prison in El Salvador, where he was tortured.
Protests from his union, immigration rights group CASA and many others succeeded in forcing the government to return Abrego García to the U.S. But the Justice Department filed trumped-up charges of human trafficking against Abrego García and threw him back in jail. He was transferred to Moshannon Valley Sept. 26 from the Farmville Detention Center in Virginia, where he had been closer to his family and attorneys.
Abrego García “is too high profile, so they keep him in a wing of the prison separate from the rest of us,” said Anou. “To them, he should never be let out.” Anou said the other inmates there know about Abrego García’s fight and support him.
People in Clearfield County, a rural coal-mining area, and in State College, where Pennsylvania State University is located, have organized protests in defense of Abrego García and others held in nearby Moshannon. They also call for the detention center to be shut down.
“We have to let people know the facts of immigrants’ lives, not the falsifications,” Anou told the Militant. “And we have to support the prisoners on the inside who are fighting.”
While the Militant spoke with Anou, supporters of his fight to stay in the U.S. came to the café to welcome him home.
Contributions to his fight can be sent to the “Save Our Dad from Deportation” defense fund on GoFundMe.com.