ICE Chief Tony Pham Is Leaving Out a Crucial Part Out of His Family Story, Cousin Says
By: Philippa Pb Hughes
Tags: Gen Longreads, Immigration, Society, Politics, Ice

My Cousin Runs ICE. He’s Killing the Same American Dream Granted to His Own Parents.

The lie at the heart of the Pham family ‘pass to freedom’

In August, my mother forwarded me an email. “Trump administration taps Vietnam refugee as new ICE chief,” it said. I opened it, and learned that my cousin, Tony Pham, had just been appointed to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Tony’s ascent to this position instilled great pride in my family, especially among the older members who skew politically conservative. I, however, was appalled that my cousin allowed his identity as a refugee to be used as cover for the enforcement of increasingly cruel and dehumanizing immigration policies. And I questioned my cousin’s claim that he had followed the “lawful path to citizenship,” which doesn’t give a full picture of what really happened.

My cousin came to this country in 1975, one of 125,000 Vietnamese refugees who were resettled in the United States as a result of the Vietnam War, despite strong public opposition. “To ignore the refugees in their hour of need would be to repudiate the values we cherish as a nation of immigrants,” said President Ford, who’d fought to bring them here. “I was not about to let Congress do that.” This year, President Trump capped the number of refugees our country would accept at 18,000 worldwide. Had my cousin needed refuge in the United States today, the chances he would be permitted to enter would be slim.

When the communists took over Vietnam in 1975, millions of people were desperate to flee the country. This was certainly true for my uncles, who had served in the South Vietnamese military alongside U.S. troops. They would have faced certain torture and possible death had they stayed. Like today’s refugees, they would undertake any means possible to avoid persecution and to protect their families.

This is precisely what Tony’s father did. Tony was two years old at the time his parents emigrated. Had his family remained in Vietnam, he would likely have watched his father ripped away and possibly killed, seen his family’s livelihood destroyed, and grown up in poverty. But Tony was lucky. My mother had a devoted friend named Jerry Edwards, who us kids always called Mr. Edwards. He was an official in the U.S. Embassy in Vietnam with the Defense Attaché’s Office, according to correspondence with my family.

On April 19, 1975, 11 days before the fall of South Vietnam, Mr. Edwards wrote a letter addressed “To Whom It May Concern,” vouching for the integrity of Tony’s father. It begins, “This letter is to introduce my brother-in-law Captain Pham…” and it goes on to say, “He is a very sincere, loyal, and dedicated individual. Whatever aid and comfort you can provide him and his family would be greatly appreciated.”

Mr. Edwards understood very well the significance of his actions. Acting on his deeply held beliefs to save our family, he lied in this letter.

Mr. Edwards gave my uncle the letter to carry as a backup in case anyone questioned the validity of the hastily secured documents that facilitated his journey to America, documents my mother had courageously obtained for him through her connections. Over the years I’ve heard different family stories about the role Mr. Edwards’ letter played in Tony’s father’s escape, including that he never needed to use the letter at all, but was prepared to, in the event my uncle ran into trouble during the journey. What’s not in question is that over the years it has become part of the family’s public lore, and to this day, Tony says he carries that tattered letter in his wallet. He calls it his family’s “document to freedom.” In a recent interview with Fox, Tony asserted that the letter played a crucial role in securing his mother’s escape, stating that “based on that letter she was able to get a seat on the flight out of Saigon that day on April 19.” And in a 2014 Facebook post, he wrote, “I hope Mr. Edwards understood the significance of his action of signing our pass to freedom. Without it, our lives would have been dramatically different.”

Mr. Edwards understood very well the significance of his actions. Acting on his deeply held beliefs to save our family, he lied in this letter. He was not Capt. Pham’s legal brother-in-law at the time he wrote the letter for Tony’s father. His divorce from his first wife was not final until 1978 — three years after he wrote the letter. And though he would go on to live with my mother, brother, and me after we moved to Virginia, Mr. Edwards and my mother never married.

My cousin claimed in an email to ICE attorneys that he had followed the “lawful path to citizenship” while also touting this “document to freedom,” a document based on a lie. This misrepresentation of his family history underscores the hypocrisy of his claim and the shortcomings of a deeply flawed immigration system.

Mr. Edwards passed away in 1988, so he never got to see Tony’s rise to power in the Trump administration. He stepped into the void left by my parents’ divorce and was a father figure to me. He took me to church on Sundays, read fairy tales to me every night before I went to bed, and picked me up from school whenever I stayed late for extracurricular activities. He helped me study for my elementary school’s spelling bee championship, which I won, and he helped me with a school project called Olympics of the Mind when my teammates failed to show up. Most importantly, he taught me to be kind, generous, and compassionate. I haven’t always lived up to his expectations, but I have tried.

I am grateful to him for risking his job and his professional reputation on behalf of our family. I admire him for putting people above laws. I understand why he stretched the truth when he helped save my relatives. His courage shows the hollow protestations of many conservative immigrants like my cousin who say they “did it the right way” when they came to America, while those seeking refuge here today are shameful and inferior.

I know to the core of my being that Mr. Edwards would not approve of my cousin’s hypocrisy and certainly would not have approved of his aggressive deportation tactics. Mr. Edwards embodied empathy and grace in everything he did. He never could have supported policies that veer toward infringing on human rights.