‘I Just Want To Live’: Threat Of Deportation Haunts Portland Man
The Kim family, from left: Leilani, Soeun, Keanu, Theresa, and Joshua — Theresa’s son from a previous relationship — on Portland’s Western Promenade this month. (Ari Snider/Maine Public)
Soeun Kim, and his wife, Theresa Kim, sat at a picnic table on Portland’s Western Promenade earlier this month, watching a home video on Theresa’s phone.
In the clip, Soeun is lying in bed, holding his baby daughter, Leilani, while his 10-year-old stepson, Joshua, looks on.
Then, everyone falls silent, and Joshua begins to sob quietly.
Theresa captured this moment two years ago, shortly before Soeun turned himself in to immigration agents to face deportation to Cambodia. Not knowing when, if ever, he’d be able to see his family again, Soeun said he wanted to leave his infant daughter with at least some reminder of his presence.
“I made a few videos just reading to her, so it would be a lot easier you know for her mother to really console her when I’m not home,” he said.
Soeun’s path to the U.S. began in the late 1970s, when he was born in a refugee camp in Thailand after his family fled their home in Cambodia during the genocidal regime of the Khmer Rouge. They were resettled to the U.S. when Soeun was about six years old, and moved to Portland soon after.