Iraq War Veteran, Oregon Resident Arrested By ICE Now Faces Deportation

PORTLAND, OR — In an exclusive interview with The Guardian, a man recently detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Portland spoke out against the possibility of being deported to South Korea — a country he left at five years old.

Now 41 years old, Chong Kim sits alone at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Tacoma, Wash., Guardian reporter Sam Levin wrote in his July 14 article. Kim was sent to Tacoma after being detained in Portland on April 5.

What Kim expected to be a routine check-in with an immigration official at a federal building in Portland turned into an ICE arrest based on a relatively recent criminal conviction, Kim told The Guardian. The previous conviction, Kim said, was related to his arrest in February 2016 for throwing a make-shift Molotov cocktail-type explosive at the back of a brick building, which Kim said caused minor damage but earned him a felony conviction for attempted arson.

"I was not in the right state of mind," Kim told The Guardian, which further noted that Kim in August 2016 enrolled into a residential substance abuse program run by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

An Iraq War veteran who struggled with drug abuse after his honorable discharge in 2010, Kim was just starting to get his life back together when he was arrested by ICE agents this past spring. Kim reportedly completed the substance abuse program in January 2017 and was on the upswing, The Guardian reported. Now Kim faces being sent back to the country he left in 1981, when his parents legally immigrated to the U.S.

"It frightens me to think about," Kim told The Guardian. "How impossible a task would it be to rebuild my life from scratch? I would feel like I'm utterly alone."

Click here to read the full story from The Guardian.

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