{"id":204224,"date":"2026-03-04T18:33:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T18:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/204224\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T18:33:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T18:33:09","slug":"cambodian-genocide-survivor-released-from-ice-custody-after-court-order-long-beach-post-news-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/204224\/","title":{"rendered":"Cambodian Genocide survivor released from ICE custody after court order \u2022 Long Beach Post News"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published by LAist<\/a> on Tuesday, March 3, 2026.<\/p>\n

ICE has released Cambodian Genocide survivor\u00a0Sithy Yi<\/a>\u00a0from immigration detention following an order by a federal judge.<\/p>\n

Yi, who fled the genocide and came to the U.S. with her family in 1981, was detained by ICE at a routine immigration check-in in Santa Ana on Jan. 8 and held at the Adelanto Detention Facility for almost two months.<\/p>\n

In response to a lawsuit arguing that she was being held unconstitutionally, U.S. District Judge Cynthia Valenzuela\u00a0issued an order Friday<\/a>\u00a0requiring ICE to \u201cimmediately release\u201d Yi. The order also prevents the agency from deporting Yi without providing an opportunity to be heard by a neutral arbiter and bans ICE from transferring her outside the court\u2019s jurisdiction.<\/p>\n

The ruling<\/a>\u00a0says the government did not oppose Yi\u2019s request for the court to order her released. Her attorney had alleged ICE failed to follow procedural requirements such as showing she violated any conditions of her release or proving that she would likely be deported in the \u201creasonably foreseeable future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reunited with her family<\/p>\n

Yi was released Monday and has returned to her family, according to her attorney. Yi\u2019s family\u00a0includes<\/a>\u00a0her mother and two sisters she helped to survive starvation and mass killings at the hands of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia before they came to the U.S. as refugees.<\/p>\n

Retaliation allegations against detention center staff<\/p>\n

Yi\u2019s attorney says that in addition to the court\u2019s findings, she believes her client\u2019s Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment was violated while detained at Adelanto.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aShe was retaliated against by security and medical personnel because she had been communicating with her family, and through her family with me. And we\u2019ve been reporting about these conditions to Sen. [Adam] Schiff, as well as other members of Congress. And somehow word got back and she was retaliated against,\u201d her attorney Kim Luu-Ng told LAist\u2019s\u00a0AirTalk\u00a0on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was verbally abused, but she was also punished. She was not allowed to use the bathroom. She was not allowed to shower,\u201d Luu-Ng continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is absolutely freezing in the detention center, but they don\u2019t care. She said to me that she has to wrap herself in blankets, but they\u2019re still freezing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yi and other detainees were regularly getting sick from spoiled food served at the facility.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are civil detainees. These are not criminal detainees. And there are laws in this country that are supposed to protect against this type of punitive and cruel treatment of detainees,\u201d Luu-Ng added.<\/p>\n

She said that in many ways, she feels \u201ccriminal detainees have even more rights than civil detainees. And so this is a real crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why Yi was released<\/p>\n

Luu-Ng has represented Yi since her immigration case began in 2013. Yi was first brought to immigration court after a drug conviction her family says stemmed from untreated mental health issues from being tortured as a child and prolonged exposure to abuse into adulthood.<\/p>\n

Her immigration case ended in 2016, with a judge ruling to withhold an order of removal due to concerns she would be tortured if she were deported to Cambodia.<\/p>\n

Yi also applied for a U visa \u2014 a type of visa providing temporary immigration status to crime victims who have cooperated with law enforcement \u2014 in 2022. That visa application is still pending.<\/p>\n

Judge Valenzuela explained her reasoning for the order, writing in the document that ICE did not oppose a motion by Yi\u2019s lawyer requesting she be released. Luu-Ng claimed in the motion that ICE detained her client without following required steps, such as showing she violated any conditions of her release or proving that she would likely be deported in the \u201creasonably foreseeable future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Valenzuela also pointed to\u00a0another case<\/a>\u00a0against ICE where she granted an order for Ramy Hakim to be released based on similar circumstances Jan. 22. Hakim was detained at a regular immigration check-in Dec. 19 despite receiving protections in 2004 against being deported to Egypt where he would likely be tortured. He was held at the same Adelanto facility as Yi.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe facts are a Biden-appointed activist judge ordered this criminal illegal alien released into American communities,\u201d a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in an emailed statement. The spokesperson said Yi was ordered to be removed from the country in 2016 had \u201creceived full due process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yi\u2019s attorney says ICE kept her detained through the weekend despite the judge ordering her to be released immediately.<\/p>\n

\u201dICE doesn\u2019t work on the weekends,\u201d Luu-Ng said. \u201cAny minute that my client was detained beyond the time that the order was issued was an unconstitutional detention.\u201d<\/p>\n

ICE spokespeople have not responded to a request for comment about this allegation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article was originally published by LAist on Tuesday, March 3, 2026. ICE has released Cambodian Genocide survivor\u00a0Sithy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-204224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}