Petition to Stop the Deportation of Samoeuth Som

To: The Honorable Christine Olson/ The United States Immigration Court/ and any official or judge making decisions about her case,

We, the undersigned, urgently petition for the humanitarian relief of Samoeuth Som, a Lawful Permanent Resident of the United States facing deportation. We ask the Court to consider her profound and unique circumstances with compassion and justice.

1. A Stateless Refugee Who Know Only the US as Home:
Samoeuth came to the United States as a three-month-old infant under refugee status.Her family had fled the Cambodian genocide. She was born in a refugee camp in Thailand; a nation that does not grant citizenship to those born in its camps. Cambodia also does not recognize this generation as citizens. Samoeuth is stateless. The United States is the only country she has ever known, the only home she has ever had.

2. A Mother and Grandmother Anchoring a Family:
Samoeuth is the mother to four children and a grandmother to a one-year-old grandchild,all U.S. residents. Understanding the deep wounds caused by family separation, the women helping to raise her children, one through open adoption, another through guardianship, have worked intentionally for years to keep the children connected to her and their biological family. We did this because we have witnessed the intergenerational trauma that haunts the Khmer community, trauma exacerbated every time a family is torn apart. Keeping this family whole is not just a preference; it is a moral imperative for the children's well-being and healing.

3. The Systemic Failure & Injustice of These Deportations:
Samoeuth’s case is not an anomaly.It is part of a systemic failure in the resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees. Thousands were resettled in the 1980s and 90s without adequate support, often into impoverished and high-crime neighborhoods, and left to navigate immense trauma alone. Now, decades later, they are being deported for past mistakes made in that context.
This practice is so widely recognized as unjust that there is an ongoing lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security(DHS) regarding the deportations of stateless Southeast Asian refugees. History has already proven these deportations wrong: following past waves of deportations, the U.S. was later forced to accept many Cambodians back after recognizing the catastrophic human toll.

4. Deportation is a Death Sentence to Danger and Abandonment:
To deport Samoeuth is to sentence her to extreme danger and abandonment.She would be sent to Cambodia, a country she has never set foot in, with no identity documents, no support network, and no means to survive. Furthermore, she would arrive during a severe humanitarian crisis. Due to ongoing border conflicts and bombings between Thailand and Cambodia, over half a million Cambodian citizens are currently displaced. Cambodia cannot support its own displaced citizens, let alone a stateless deportee with no ties to the nation. Her survival would be at grave risk.

5. Our Plea:
We urge you,Your Honor, to see Samoeuth not as a case number, but as a human being: a refugee who was granted safety here as a baby, a mother whose family is fighting to stay together, and a stateless person for whom deportation is not a relocation but a catastrophic exile into peril.

We ask that you use your judicial discretion to allow her to remain in the United States, the only home she has ever known, with her children, her grandchild, and her community.

Grant her the mercy and justice that the refugee protection system was meant to provide.

Respectfully submitted,

Jamie Guerin
On behalf of Samoeuth’s family and supporters