Former Modesto gangster doesn’t deserve to be deported somewhere he’s never been | Opinion

He works a tough day job for which few are qualified, helping former inmates like himself find a job and a place to live.

Because without some support these guys can’t hope to atone for the damage they’ve done, he founded a nonprofit that provides food, clothing, education and life skills for inmates.

He also mentors at-risk young people in the hope of steering them away from crime and regret. His experiences as a stress management and intervention counselor and as a Christian minister come in handy, as does his “If I can do it, so can you” example of leaving behind a violent Modesto street gang for a life of meaning and purpose.

And at night, Sithy Bin lies awake, wondering if tomorrow might bring a 10-day notice that all this will come to an end. He’s on the shortlist for deportation to Cambodia, a place he has never been.

Opinion

The threat is real because his mother was pregnant with him in 1980 when his parents fled the Khmer Rouge, the name given to the brutal communist party that committed countless atrocities in Cambodia after the Vietnam War.

Bin, 42, was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and was a toddler when his family arrived in the United States, so he’s not a U.S. citizen. And noncitizens who commit aggravated felonies must go, the law says, even if they’ve done their time and paid their debt to society behind bars.

The possibility of a get-out-of-deportation card exists — in the form of a pardon from California Gov. Gavin Newsom. A formal application is on his desk, awaiting a decision.

The law allows people who know Bin to influence Newsom, so many have tried.

Recognizing the work he’s doing — diverting wandering souls from prison while helping those emerging from custody — former congressman Alan Lowenthal wrote a letter advocating for Bin. So did the mayor of Long Beach, where Bin relocated from Modesto. So did some council members, who put him on that city’s Reentry Advisory Council.

His state senator, Lena Gonzalez, also wrote a letter urging a pardon, which would relax deportation rules and allow Bin to stay where he’s doing so much good. California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, too, wrote a letter on Bin’s behalf.

“Keep Sithy (pronounced city) Home” supporters staged a rally in Los Angeles for him. As of Thursday, 2,394 people had signed an online Change.org petition urging a pardon.

Unfortunately, the groundswell of support is not unanimous.

The one entity known to oppose Bin’s pardon is the same that rightly put him behind bars in the first place: the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office.

Prosecutors were doing their job when Bin was convicted for firing shots at a rival gang member’s house in Modesto in 2005. A bullet struck a 39-year-old bystander who had nothing to do with either gang. She lived, but when the judge added enhancements for gang affiliation and for using a gun, Bin ended up with two sentences totaling 40 years to life.

Mighty change of heart

Bin said he didn’t know he had injured someone until his lawyer told him, after his arrest. The woman is related to friends of his and is a part of his Cambodian American community, he told me.

“It devastated me. It could have been my mom, my aunt, my sister. That’s when I realized, ‘I’m living a lie here — the gang gossip, the lies we tell each other, the cycle of darkness.’”

In prison, Bin consumed all the self-improvement programs he could find, including Harvard and Stanford business courses. In 2014, he was ordained by International Missionary Center USA. He became certified to teach English as a second language and to mentor youngsters.

Judge Scott Steffen, who died in December, had presided over both of Bin’s sentences in Stanislaus Superior Court, first in 2008 and then in 2019 after sentencing reform took effect. At the second, Steffen clearly was impressed, saying to Bin, “I have never seen anybody who has done as much work or (has) been as successful as you. ... You didn’t just sit around lamenting your fate, but you did things to improve yourself even though it looked like your release was far off.”

The judge erased one of Bin’s two life sentences, and the time he had served satisfied the other. A parole board chairman approached Bin for a handshake and best wishes for a bright future.

But with friends and family waiting just outside — including his two now-grown daughters, raised without him while he was incarcerated — Bin was rerouted in 2020 to another cell, in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center. And there he languished, until a lawsuit aimed at relieving suffering and death for those in congregate settings during the COVID-19 pandemic paved the way for his release, and he was freed.

Relatives in Modesto mostly are Buddhist, those elsewhere are Christian, and some are atheists, Bin said. Because everyone had assumed he would die behind bars, or be an elderly parolee, “my release is a whole testimony on its own,” he said. “Even those who don’t believe in God can’t deny that he set me free. It’s a miracle I’m home.”

A program helping undocumented migrants facing deportation drew him to Los Angeles County, where Bin’s remarkable transformation took off.

Can’t forget victim and violence, Stanislaus DA says

But nothing he has done or can do will change the view of law-and-order prosecutors more concerned with a need to appear tough on crime.

“Bin has received a significant amount of clemency already since his conviction,” Stanislaus District Attorney Jeff Laugero wrote in an email. “Though we commend his efforts to rehabilitate, we cannot forget the victim or the violent nature of his crime and the impact violent crime, in particular, has on our community. On balance, I do not believe a pardon is warranted.”

In a telephone interview, Wendell Emerson — who prosecuted Bin all those years ago, and now is Laugero’s chief deputy — said, “I hope he has honestly turned his life around. Now that he’s a member of society again, I hope he doesn’t represent a threat to public safety. We can only judge by his conduct in the past. He nearly killed an innocent lady at a barbecue who was shot because the defendant decided to spray a house.”

Doesn’t it make sense to consider what he’s done in the years since?

Bin now is a case manager for Friends Outside and a pastor’s assistant at Renew Church LA. The name of the nonprofit he helped form: Made New Foundation. His constant message to those he counsels: “There is always a chance to change for the better.”

Because of the strides he has made, UCLA Extension gave Bin a full scholarship to its Alcohol and Drug Counseling program. So did the California Mental Health Services Authority, for its Peer Support Specialist program.

Bin wants to get married, but the threat of being deported has put that on hold. His fiancée, Rose Solorio, took photos of him for this column.

Being in limbo “doesn’t give him the security to make plans, to get married, all the things you would want to do,” said Caitlin Bellis, a National Immigration Project attorney.

Here is someone doing everything in his power to steer the most at-risk among us away from hate and toward stability, effectively saving lives and making society safer. If Bin doesn’t deserve clemency, who does?

Gov. Newsom, Sithy Bin is worth keeping

Newsom appropriately listens to law enforcement. Following protocol, his office asked the Stanislaus DA to contact the victim and ask her opinion. She has “no interest in having contact or providing input to the governor’s office,” Laugero wrote in a Feb. 23 letter to Newsom.

The bar set by Laugero is impossibly high. If no one can clear it, redemption becomes impossible. When hope is lost, desperation sets in, and lawlessness is not far behind.

Laugero should rescind his opposition.

Newsom should grant Bin a pardon.

Freed from incarceration, Bin also should be freed from the anxiety of getting that tap on the shoulder and a one-way ticket to a place he’s never been.

None of us is who we were 18 years ago. Where would anyone be without second chances?

Ours is not a society built on refusing to forgive. We are better than that.

Modesto may have gotten Bin’s worst. Allowing Southern California to enjoy the fruits of Bin’s best is a gift we should have the grace to offer.