There’s a crisis in AANHPI communities that most Americans will never see. No headlines, no viral videos, just quiet charter flights carrying Southeast Asian refugees back to countries they fled decades ago or to countries many have never known.
Between May 24-26, 2025, at least 160 Southeast Asian immigrants were deported in what advocates called the largest deportation operation targeting these communities in recent memory. 67 to Laos and 93 to Vietnam. Many spent 60 hours on flights with stops in Hawaii, Guam, Laos, and finally Vietnam, after being held in ICE facilities for months. The flight left on Memorial Day weekend. The symbolism is not lost on those of us who know the history.
This is what invisibility looks like when it’s compounded. AANHPI people have long been rendered invisible in American narratives about race, immigration, and belonging. Now, our community members are disappearing from the country with the same quiet efficiency, removed on flights that receive no media coverage, detained at routine ICE check-ins they were required to attend, shuttled between detention centers without notice to their families.
Asian Americans make up the largest share of refugees and asylees in recent years. Yet when most people think about immigration, they don’t picture Cambodian refugees who survived the Killing Fields. They don’t think about Hmong families who fought alongside U.S. forces. They don’t imagine Vietnamese immigrants whose parents escaped war, a war the United States helped instigate.
Fifty years after the violence in Southeast Asia, we are witnessing a failure of the refugee resettlement system. This is state violence against communities who came here because of American military intervention, who were promised safety, who built lives and raised families on that promise.
In Los Angeles and Orange County, ICE has detained a growing number of Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese immigrants, even those checking in for routine immigration appointments. People show up for their scheduled appointments and don’t come home. Families call detention centers and can’t locate their loved ones in the system. The questions community organizations are fielding from these families are devastating: How do I self-deport? What happens to my bank accounts? How do I support my family from a country I’ve never lived in?
From January 20 to September 30, 2025, the Trump administration conducted at least 8,877 total U.S. immigration enforcement flights, including a record 969 domestic transfer flights in September alone. Each flight represents families torn apart, children left without parents, elders removed from communities they’ve served for decades.
This is where philanthropy can show up
The invisibility of AANHPI communities in immigration discourse is not accidental, it’s structural. Funding follows narrative, and if our stories aren’t being told, our organizations aren’t being resourced. 65% of Asians and 27% of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are foreign-born, yet immigration funding portfolios rarely reflect the scale of need in our communities.
This is why AAPIP launched Rooted in Resilience: A Learning Series to Support AANHPI Immigrant Families and Communities. We’re asking philanthropy to become partners in this fight. Partners who understand that supporting AANHPI immigrant communities means:
- Funding community infrastructure that can respond to rapid deportations and family separations
- Resourcing legal defense and know-your-rights education for communities living in suspended states of fear
- Supporting grassroots organizations in rural and underinvested regions where AANHPI immigrants face enforcement with little infrastructure
- Investing in narrative change that makes our communities visible in immigration policy conversations
Our learning series is creating spaces for philanthropy to engage deeply with this crisis, from funder briefings on Southeast Asian deportations to strategy sessions on rapid response funding. We’re connecting funders directly with community leaders who are navigating this crisis.
The deportation machine is accelerating. Flights are leaving more frequently. Families are being separated faster than advocates can respond. But philanthropy has the power to resource resilience, to fund community care, to support the organizations that are keeping families together and fighting for due process.
AANHPI communities need philanthropy to resource the work with the same urgency that enforcement is being carried out.