CINCINNATI, Ohio ‒ Socheath Phong wants to show you why he’s here, living alone in this small rental house just off West Eighth Street.
His English is improving, but his accent is thick. He worries this might cause confusion, so he wants you to see. He wants you to understand.
At the kitchen table Phong opens a folder and removes some paperwork. He tells you this is supporting material for the application he filled out years ago to come to the United States as a refugee.
He points to an official-looking document from the Cambodian government. It’s the arrest warrant police issued for him in 2017 because of his pro-democracy work for Cambodia’s outlawed opposition party.
“They call us traitors,” Phong says.
In Cambodia, being called a traitor is not something to take lightly. It can land a person in prison, or an early grave. So when Phong learned of the warrant, he fled across the border to Thailand, leaving behind his wife and four children.
He says he had no choice. He’d already seen the government dissolve his political party, send friends and colleagues to jail and place his party’s cofounder under house arrest.
In January, a former legislator was shot and killed as he waited for a bus near a noodle stand.
Socheath Phong lives and works in Cincinnati after the United States granted him refugee status two years ago. But President Donald Trump later suspended the refugee program, leaving Phong’s wife and children behind in Cambodia.
Phong came to the United States as a refugee two years ago, after the State Department conducted extensive background checks, security reviews and interviews that found he had good reason to fear for his safety. He settled in Cincinnati with help from Catholic Charities.
Soon after he arrived, Phong, 52, began working with the government and Catholic Charities to bring his wife and two youngest children here. That always was the plan, he says. To reunite his family.
But in January, President Donald Trump shut down the program that brought Phong to America, as well as the program that would allow his family to follow him. There was no longer room in the United States for refugees, Trump said at the time. He believed they burdened communities and hurt the economy.
Refugees admitted into the United States annually since 1985
Phong wants you to know he is grateful to be here. But when you ask him about being separated from his family, his voice trails off. He removes his glasses and wipes his eyes. His children, he says, are growing up without him.
After eight years apart, he is an image on their computer screen, a voice on their phone.
He fears he is becoming a memory.
“Who can help me?” he asks. “It breaks the heart.”
Father’s death leads to a childhood as a refugee
As his dinner of fish stew and rice simmers on the stove, Phong invites you to follow him upstairs. He opens the door to a room with a desk, a small bed and family photos on the wall.
“This is my father,” he says, pointing to a faded portrait of a young man who bears more than a passing resemblance to Phong.
His father, Thlai Phong, was an activist in Cambodia in the 1970s, advocating for human rights and democratic reforms as war and insurgencies raged across Southeast Asia.
When the communist Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia and began rounding up political opponents, Thlai Phong did what his son would do decades later. He went into hiding in Thailand.
But the Khmer Rouge sent word to Phong’s father that if he did not return, his wife and young son would be killed.
A copy of the arrest warrant issued for Socheath Phong by the Cambodian government in 2017. He fled to Thailand, leaving behind his wife and four children, and later was granted refugee status by the United States.
Phong isn’t sure how old he was at the time, maybe 4 or 5, but he knows what happened when his father came home. His mother told him years later that Khmer Rouge fighters beat his father to death as she watched. He became one of some 2 million victims of a genocide that would turn Cambodia into “the killing fields.”
His father’s killers then destroyed every trace of him they could find, personal possessions, mementos, anything with his name or image. It was as if ending his life was not enough. They wanted to erase his existence.
Phong notices your eyes drift back to the photo of his father. He answers the next question before you ask.
He says the photo that now hangs on his wall survived because his mother, Toeur Pom, hid it under a kitchen cabinet. If the Khmer Rouge had found it, he says, they might have killed her, too, but she would not give it up.
The photo came with them when she and Phong abandoned their home and moved to Thailand after his father’s death, fearing the Khmer Rouge would one day return. They would not go back to Cambodia for a decade.
The photo traveled with Phong again, years later, when he fled Cambodia in 2017, first for Thailand, then for the United States.
While explaining this to you, Phong pauses, as though considering for the first time the many years he’s spent away from home.
“I’ve been a refugee all my life,” he says.
First a political activist, then a wanted man
Back at the kitchen table, you flip through pages from Phong’s file and find a batch of photos from his days as a political activist in Cambodia.
In one, he’s standing in the back of a white pick-up truck, a bullhorn in front of him and a blue, red and white Cambodian flag fluttering from the driver’s side window. In another, he’s kneeling on a concrete floor with a dozen villagers, helping them plan for an upcoming election.
Other photos are more ominous. Some show police questioning Phong on the street, or men in civilian clothes lurking around the family home.
Socheath Phong’s days as a political activist in Cambodia.
“Spy at my house,” Phong wrote above one of the photos.
These are glimpses of Phong’s life in Cambodia before the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen dissolved the Cambodia National Rescue Party, or CNRP, and began harassing and jailing its leaders and supporters.
As a young man, Phong saw the party as the nation’s best hope for building a pluralistic, democratic Cambodia, an elusive goal in the decades since the fall of the Khmer Rouge. In time, he believed his country could rise above the horrors that claimed his father’s life.
Phong tells you he still believes this, even now, as he sits half a world away looking at photos of men and women who, like him, are no longer able to speak publicly in their own country. “I will not stop fighting for freedom,” he says.
These days, he fights from afar, by doing TV and radio interviews, by posting commentary on social media, anything he can to hold together a political movement that Cambodia’s leaders remain determined to snuff out.
You pick up a photo of Phong and an older man, standing by the side of a road. They are dressed in matching shirts and caps bearing the rising sun symbol of the CNRP.
Phong explains the man in the photo was a party leader and mentor. After Phong fled to Thailand, he says, his friend called to offer encouragement. He assured Phong the work they’d done made a difference, despite the government crackdown.
“Please,” his friend told him. “Keep trying.”
Phong promised he would, but he’d just become a refugee for the second time in his life. His country’s future was not the only worry on his mind.
‘I need to have my family’
Phong picks his phone up from the table and begins searching through his photos. Finding one, he smiles and hands you the phone.
These are his children. Two boys and two girls, ages 14 to 27. They are wearing jeans and jerseys and T-shirts with colorful logos. They could be on their way to a high school class or walking on a college campus.
They could be driving down West Eighth Street in Cincinnati right now, heading to the Indian restaurant or the Latin market not far from Phong’s house.
Socheath Phong shares a photo of his children, two boys and two girls, ages 14 to 27, with Enquirer reporter Dan Horn.
You ask what they talk about when he calls home, when the family is together in Cambodia and Phong is here in his kitchen. He says he tells them what fathers everywhere tell their children.
Try hard in school.
Think about your future.
Stay out of trouble.
The hardest part, he says, the part that gets the tears flowing, is when they ask if he’s OK, if he’s taking care of himself.
“They know that I live alone,” he says.
Phong doesn’t want them to worry. He always tells them he’s doing fine. His job in food service at Good Samaritan Hospital keeps him busy. His political activism keeps him engaged with the struggle in Cambodia.
Socheath Phong in the kitchen of the rental home in Cincinnati, where he’s lived since coming to the United States as a refugee two years ago. The flag of his native Cambodia hangs on the wall behind him.
But Phong is not doing fine. Not really. He is apart from his family, from his wife and his children. This way of living has become familiar, but familiarity doesn’t change what he knows in his heart is true: His family is not whole.
You hand the phone back to him. He puts it on the table, next to the papers and photos from his refugee file.
“I need to have my family,” he says.
This is what he wants you to understand. It’s why he opened his door to you today. He is a refugee, yes, like the Germans and Italians who came to this same neighborhood a century ago, sometimes for reasons much like those that brought Phong here two years ago.
But he is more than a refugee. He is a husband and father trying to hold together his family. He is a son trying to honor the work of his father.
Before you leave, Phong steps into another room and emerges with a krama, a traditional scarf worn by men, women and children throughout Cambodia. The fabric is decorated with a pattern of green, purple and white stripes and squares. He hands it to you.
You tell him the scarf is beautiful, but you can’t accept it. He presses it into your hands anyway. He explains the krama is a symbol of Cambodian identity. For him, it is a reminder of his place in the world.
For you, it is a gift. A reminder that everyone has a story worth sharing.
You tell him you understand. You thank him and drape the scarf over your arm. Then you step onto the porch and into the bright afternoon sun, heading home, as you do every day, to your own family.
Dan Horn is an investigative reporter with the Cincinnati Enquirer, part of the USA TODAY Network.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Trump’s immigration crackdown strands refugee’s family in Cambodia
