This World Refugee Month, Remember That Displacement Doesn't End at Resettlement

Written by Kevin Lam

World Refugee Month is often framed as a celebration of resilience. But for many refugee communities, including Southeast Asian refugees and their families in Massachusetts, it is also a reminder that displacement is not a single event confined to the past. Decades after resettlement in the United States, many continue to navigate housing insecurity, detention, and deportation.

Following the War in Southeast Asia, commonly referred to as the Vietnam War, more than 1.2 million refugees from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam were resettled in the United States, making Southeast Asians the largest refugee community ever resettled in the country. U.S. military intervention in Southeast Asia, including chemical warfare and widespread bombing campaigns across Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, devastated communities and forced millions of people to flee their homes in search of safety. Yet many Southeast Asian refugees arrived in neighborhoods already impacted by decades of government disinvestment, inadequate housing, limited in-language and culturally responsive services, and overpolicing. Combined with punitive federal policies enacted in the 1990s, these conditions helped create the prison-to-deportation pipeline and fueled a Southeast Asian deportation crisis that has persisted for more than two decades.

Today, many Southeast Asian families are once again confronting the threat of detention and deportation. Increased federal immigration enforcement and ICE operations targeting immigrant communities have fueled fear and uncertainty. Under the second Trump administration, at least 486 people have been deported to Laos, and 987 people have been deported to Vietnam.

At AARW, we have spent the past decade organizing alongside Southeast Asian refugees facing detention and deportation. We have seen families torn apart by policies that treat refugees as disposable decades after they were resettled into this country. We have also witnessed the resilience of communities that continue to fight for one another despite these challenges.

This World Refugee Month, we must move beyond celebrating refugee resilience and confront the policies that continue to place refugee communities at risk. Refugees should not be forced to spend decades rebuilding their lives only to face detention, deportation, and family separation. The promise of refuge must mean more than survival—it must mean the ability to remain rooted in the communities we call home.