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MANAGE YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONLand Of The Free?
Tram Nguyen On The Backlash Against Immigrants In Post-9/11 America
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Tram Nguyen was born in 1975 in the city of Qui Nhon, in central Vietnam, where her parents met after having migrated from the Communist-ruled north in 1954. During the long war that followed, her father became a major in the South Vietnamese army and, after the fall of Saigon, was detained in a Communist reeducation camp. By the time the family was allowed to visit, Nguyen didn’t recognize him. She ran away from the strange, sick, sweaty man who wanted to embrace her — a memory that would return to her years later with visceral force when she began her research, writing, and advocacy on behalf of immigrants held in detention centers here in the U.S.
Once Nguyen’s father was released, the family went into hiding and then fled the country. They were among the first “boat people” — Vietnamese who escaped on small, overcrowded fishing boats. These boat-borne refugees eventually numbered as many as 1 million, about half of whom died at sea. The Nguyens were lucky: Thai fishermen rescued them and brought them to a refugee camp. In 1979 an American Catholic church sponsored their relocation to Wichita, Kansas, where they struggled to rebuild their lives.
With a degree in English from UCLA, Nguyen went to work as a journalist, covering ethnic communities for the mainstream media, but she soon became frustrated with the limitations put on her: her editors were uncomfortable with her frank coverage of racial issues. Today Nguyen lives in Oakland, California, and is executive editor of ColorLines, a multiracial national magazine covering politics, organizing, and creative arts in communities of color. Her extensive coverage of civil-liberties issues earned her a New California Media Award in 2003.
I got in touch with Nguyen after reading her book We Are All Suspects Now: Untold Stories from Immigrant Communities after 9/11 (Beacon Press). At the time, Americans were trying to make sense of news reports about abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but the plight of immigrants held in dehumanizing conditions right here in the U.S. remained largely unknown, despite the huge number of people affected: an estimated twenty thousand in custody on any given day, two hundred thousand detained annually, plus approximately twelve hundred “secret detainees” rounded up as material witnesses after September 11, 2001. Nguyen was working to lift the veil of secrecy, and I knew from my own experience how difficult that could be: Prior to the terrorist attacks on the U.S., I had been a volunteer paralegal and interpreter for Spanish-speaking immigrants detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service [INS]. Outraged by the human-rights abuses I’d discovered, I’d tried — and failed — to attract media attention to their plight. In the aftermath of 9/11, INS enforcement functions were moved to the Department of Homeland Security, and the agency was renamed Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE]. With immigrants widely seen as potential terrorists, I was sure the veil of secrecy would be even harder to penetrate. I wanted to know how Nguyen had done it, and how she had earned the trust of the families she’d profiled.
While we made plans to meet, millions of immigrants — some documented, some not — marched to protest the highly punitive Sensenbrenner bill (named for Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin), which would have criminalized both undocumented residents and anyone who aided them. Vigilante groups patrolling the U.S.–Mexico border received extensive media coverage. Suddenly immigration was high on the country’s political agenda.
