U.S. Immigration Returns Passport To Visalia Laotian Man (he wants to return home before he dies)

[Kadie]

U.S. Immigration Returns Passport To Visalia Laotian Man
Posted: May 19, 2010 11:25 AM PDT

There's good news to report on a story KMPH first brought you over a week ago.

A Visalia Hmong War Veteran's passport is now being returned back to him.

The 88 year-old Laotian man fought alongside U.S. Troops in Vietnam and moved to Visalia seeking political asylum.

He'd been hoping to return to his homeland to be buried in Hmong tradition. However he wasn't allowed to return to his native country, because his passport was confiscated when he filed for political asylum.

The man filed a federal lawsuit against Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to retrieve his passport, but that lawsuit has since been dropped once the document landed in the hands of his Attorney Ken Seeger Wednesday morning.


news video at...
http://www.kmph-kfre.com/Global/story.asp?S=12508846




88-year-old Laotian will get passport back
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, May 19, 2010


(05-19) 11:52 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- U.S. immigration officials have returned the passport of an 88-year-old Laotian man who sued them to recover the document so he could return home to die, his lawyer said today.

The Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency, which had kept the Laotian passport since the man applied for political asylum in April 2008, telephoned Tuesday and offered to give it back, said attorney Kenneth Seeger.

An agency official told Seeger he had been flooded with interview requests since an article about the case appeared Tuesday in The Chronicle, the lawyer said.

"It really was the public pressure from the media," Seeger said. He said he picked up the passport today and will return it to his client, who will renew it and probably return to Laos within two months.

The Laotian, whose last name is Xiong, was a Hmong tribesman who fought on the U.S. side during the Vietnam War and was held prisoner by Laos' leftist government for more than seven years after the war, according to the suit he filed last week in federal court in San Francisco. It was filed under the name of John Doe Xiong to conceal his identity from the Laotian government.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/05/19/BA081DH8M0.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0oPN5y0CC

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. Is it SOP to confiscate passports from assylum seekers?

Kinda weird. "We'll consider letting you stay, but in the mean time YOU AIN'T GOING NOWHERE!"

[pinboy3niner]

2. Good to see a compassionate resolution