Vietnam Camp ‘Enforcer’ Won’t Fight Deportation

A Garden Grove man who brutalized fellow political prisoners in a reeducation camp after the Vietnam War will not appeal a judge’s decision to have him deported to his homeland for his alleged war crimes, officials said Tuesday.

Thi Dinh Bui, 62, would be the first person deported by the United States to Vietnam for human rights abuses, immigration officials said.

An attorney for Bui notified immigration officials that his client would not seek an appeal to the Office of Immigration because his family did not want him to remain locked up in the federal facility in San Pedro, where he has been held without bail since his arrest in 2003.

“The family just needs to get it behind them. They feel the appeal won’t accomplish anything because of time and cost,” said Louis Piscopo, Bui’s attorney.

He said Bui’s family believed he might fare better by returning to Vietnam, even though his fate there remains unclear.

He is being held at a federal facility that does not offer religious or educational programs, so Bui spends his days alone in a jail cell, Piscopo said.

“He’s 62, and it’s too much for him to take,” Piscopo said.

A former captain in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, Bui allegedly served as a camp enforcer at Thanh Cam Camp from 1978 to 1981. In one instance, he allegedly kicked a Roman Catholic priest, Father Le Huu Andrew Nguyen, into unconsciousness, then dragged him by the legs up a flight of stairs where he was kept in solitary confinement. Bui also allegedly fatally beat a prisoner he caught trying to escape and left another inmate to die after he was caught trying to flee the concentration camp.

“He had opportunities to spare them and save them, but he didn’t,” said Tracy Nguyen, assistant chief counsel for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “The crime was very, very brutal.”

In 1996, the Catholic priest wrote a memoir that circulated on the Internet and later was published in book form. A Vietnamese human rights activist in Virginia read it and reported to immigration officials, who charged Bui in August 2003.

U.S. Immigration Judge D.D. Sitgraves last week ordered Bui deported for violating immigration law by having ordered, incited and participated in the persecution of others.

Immigration officials on Tuesday said Bui has until May 27 to change his mind. They will start paperwork on May 28 to deport Bui, who could be returned to Vietnam by January.