Since last August, immigrant rights activists and families from Minnesota have been fighting for 8 Cambodian men, also known as the MN8, who are being detained and could be deported any day now. Chamroeun Phan, one of those men, now has the opportunity to be reunited with his family.

Ramsey County Attorney General John Choi has the choice to stand with the community and support a motion to reduce Chamroeun Phan’s 365-day prison sentence by one day, which would guarantee him automatic relief from deportation. Phan has been held in immigration detention for a year, despite being issued deportation relief by an immigration judge in May.

Choi himself has told Phan’s family he sympathizes with them, saying “I do not believe that deporting Mr. Phan to a country where he has never lived and whose language he does not speak is a fair consequence.” Yet now that the power is in his hands, Choi seems reluctant to take any action.

A husband and father from Maplewood, MN, Phan arrived to the U.S. as an infant and a refugee after his parents fled the Khmer Rouge genocide. He was born in a Thai refugee camp and has never set foot in Cambodia, the country the Trump Administration is now seeking to deport him to.

We urge County Attorney John Choi to allow Chamroeun’s motion to go through, which would immediately allow him to be reunited with family.