Asian Prisoner Support Committee (APSC)

The Asian Prisoner Support Committee (APSC) is an Oakland, California, group that supports Asian and Pacific Islander prisoners, detainees and deportees. Its work is not limited to Khmer people, but it leads the Pardon APSC4 campaign, which supports Cambodian community members facing deportation.

Organization details
Common name	APSC
Type	Advocacy
Focus areas	incarceration, reentry, deportation, Khmer and Southeast Asian community
City	Oakland
State / province	California
Country	United States
Website	Website
Operating status	active

History

APSC grew out of the campaign to support the "San Quentin 3," Eddy Zheng, Viet Mike Ngo and Rico Riemedio, who pressed for Ethnic Studies classes at San Quentin State Prison. APSC says the prison administration answered by sending the three to solitary confinement, for up to 11 months, and moving them to different prisons. All three were later paroled: Zheng in 2005, Riemedio in 2007 and Ngo in 2011.

APSC dates its programs to 2002. In 2010 it gave 2005 as the year the committee was re-formed. For more than a decade it was run entirely by volunteers. In 2017 it hired its first paid staff and opened an office in Oakland Chinatown. In 2023 its office was at 333 13th Street in Oakland. As of December 2024 its fiscal sponsor was Chinese for Affirmative Action, and that month an Alameda County supervisor asked the Board of Supervisors to approve $50,000 for APSC's direct services to Asian and Pacific Islander prisoners.

Programs

APSC teaches Ethnic Studies classes in prisons, gives resources to people serving life sentences, runs reentry services in the community for people coming home from prisons, jails and immigration detention, and organizes campaigns against deportation. By its own count, in 2020 it gave reentry care to 102 formerly incarcerated clients, fewer than 2 percent of whom returned to prison. That year it also mailed more than 3,000 letters, cards and newsletters to people inside, and shared the stories of more than 550 incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people through a survey, an anthology and media work.

The Pardon APSC4 campaign asks California Governor Gavin Newsom to pardon four of APSC's core staff members so that they cannot be deported. Two of the four, Borey "Peejay" Ai and Chanthon Bun, are 1.5-generation Khmer Americans. APSC counts more than 700 Cambodians deported from the United States since the two countries signed a repatriation agreement in 2002.

APSC also published Hope Is Contagious, a set of stories of families and organizers who fought detention and deportation, with illustrations by Natalie Bui. One story follows Bay Area Khmer families after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested four Oakland Khmer community members. The families rallied at city halls, at the ICE office in San Francisco and at the governor's office in Sacramento. Governor Newsom pardoned two of the four, the other two won relief in court, and all four were freed.

See also

• All organizations

References