Accompanying slides for this lesson may be found here: https://ucdavis.box.com/s/vtwmv48ue3a56rjuxpo00hfbkueevb8e 

1. Cultural Enrichment: Oral History Video (7 minutes)

• Teacher to provide brief context: We’ll be watching this spoken word poem by Kosal Khiev, a Cambodian refugee deported to his home country. 
• Watch: "Why I Write" by Kosal Khiev (7 minutes) 
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YstoXrrz1Gs 
• As students watch, ask them to jot down three or four words to describe how they felt or any thoughts about this story. 
• Share with a partner.  
• Teacher to introduce lesson objectives and lesson questions. Based on what they observed in the video, have students make a prediction as to what they will uncover as it pertains to the lesson question.

2. Shared Learning (20–30 minutes)

• Teacher to provide the following information to students (suggested in slides format). Recommended for teachers to share the presentation with discussion. Teachers can screencast the presentation so students can pre-watch and re-watch or interact with them independently. Ask students to explain what the content means after each slide.
  • Students follow along with the lesson by taking notes. Teachers can create a graphic organizer for students to use.
    • Title of Notes: Southeast Deportation Pipeline 
    • Opening question: When we think about crime, policing, and prisons, do we tend to think about Asian Americans? How does this harm different people? Who does this benefit?
    • Key terms: 
      • model minority: the Asian American stereotype of academic, economic, and cultural success in the United States
      • good refugee: a stereotype specific to Vietnamese refugees who were rescued by the US military and can assimilate quickly into US society 
        • The experiences of criminalized refugees contradict these stereotypes. 
  • History: 
    • In the 1980s and 1990s, Southeast Asian refugees fled war in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to resettle in the United States.
    • What was going on in the US at that time? 
      • 1960s-onward: Lyndon B. Johnson announces a War on Crime, which would lead to the massive expansion of the prison system in the next few decades.
      • 1970s-1980s: Richard Nixon instills the War on Drugs: spending trillions of dollars to increase policing and punishment for drug use, often targeting Black communities. 
      • 1990s: President Bill Clinton instills welfare cuts that left communities of color in poverty and drove them to crimes of desperation. 
      • 1990s: Clinton also passes even harsher criminal justice laws: 
        • Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRAIRA) - made undocumented immigrants and non-citizens with aggravated felonies eligible for deportation. 
        • Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996 - expanded category of aggravated felonies. 
        • These policies were also retroactive, meaning noncitizens could be deported for crimes committed before 1996.
    • Because of all of these policies, Southeast Asian refugees entered the prison system. Today, over 14,000 Southeast Asian refugees live with active deportation orders 
      • To what degree were the consequences of these policies on Vietnamese Americans intended or unintended? Who did or did not have power agency in relation to these policies? Who made these decisions and who was impacted by them?
    • Asian Pacific Islanders in the Prison System 
      • It is difficult to track Asians and Pacific Islanders in the prison system, because they’re grouped together under the "Other" category. 
        • The Model minority stereotype erases their struggles. 
      • From 2019-2021, the Asian Prisoner Support Committee collected surveys from 513 incarcerated and formerly incarcerated API individuals across California. 
        • Vietnamese Americans were the most common ethnicity of respondents. 
        • Using this data, let’s unpack the migration to deportation pipeline.
    • Migration - School - Prison - Deportation Pipeline 
      • Have students heard of the school-to-prison pipeline? This is a framework that activists use to describe how Southeast Asian refugees get caught in the criminal legal system and immigration system. 
      • (1) Migration
        • The first step of the pipeline is migration, or the reasons why Southeast Asian refugees originally came to the United States. Most of the respondents fled war, genocide, political persecution, and poverty in their homelands. 
      • (2) School
        • Southeast Asian youth, along with other API respondents, also faced issues with bullying, language barriers, and lack of counseling. 
      • (3) Prison 
        • In prison, more API individuals, on average, tend to serve life sentences. Their needs are often unmet because their ethnic groups are not counted in prison data. 
      • (4) Deportation
        • Even after serving their sentences, Southeast Asians are disproportionately at risk for deportation instead of coming home to their families.
        • Many fear being deported to a country that they have no ties to, since their families are now in California and the United States. 

3. Interaction with source (10–15 minutes)

• The Southeast Asia Resource Action Center: Fact Sheet. The Devastating Impact of Deportation on Southeast Asian Americans A Community of Refugees. (n.d.). https://www.searac.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/The-Devastating-Impact-of-Deportation-on-Southeast-Asian-Americans-1.pdf 
• Data Analysis: Have students analyze the source with the lesson questions in mind. The lesson questions can be discussed verbally, or as written responses. 

4. Community Collaboration (10–15 minutes)

• Divide students into four groups, based on the four main points of the timeline: Migration, School, Prison, Deportation. 
  • In each of their groups, students will use their notes to list the main ideas of each point.
  • Regroup as a class, share main ideas out loud, fill in gaps of understanding.

5. Cultural Production (20–30 minutes)

• Students will create an infographic based on one of the following categories: migration, school, prison, and deportation. The infographic must contain the main idea from the lecture, as well as statistics to supplement the information. 
  • Alternatively, students can draw an illustration to reflect one of the categories. The final product can be open to a written, visual, or audio narrative.
• Statistic requirements up to teacher discretion 
• Infographic should include but is not limited to the following: 
  • Title of Assigned Category
  • One to two Main Idea Statements 
  • Statistics 
  • Images 
  • Two to four sources and appropriate citations
  • Suggested site to create infographic: Canva, Adobe, Google Drawings

6. Conclusive Activity: Critical Circular Exchange - Share Time (5–10 minutes)

• Groups to share infographic 
  • Options for sharing - Student can print infographic and post for gallery walk, student can leave full screen on device, student can provide link made available to whole class.