Southern California jail escapee Bac Duong was ordered deported from the United States in 1998 but never left and kept committing crimes, according to the
Orange County Register.
Duong, 43, along with Jonathan Tieu and Hossein Nayeri, escaped from the Central Men's Orange County Jail in Santa Ana, California last Friday. Local, state and federal authorities have continued their search for them this week.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Duong had lived in the United States since 1991 and was convicted of burglary in San Diego in 1995. By 1998, a judge ordered that Duong be returned to Vietnam and an appeals court confirmed the ruling, said the Register.
But Vietnam rejected requests from the United States for deportations.
The Associated Press reported that Vietnam changed its travel policy to accept deportees in 2008 but only for those entering the United States since July 1995.
The Register said ICE is not allowed to hold people in custody indefinitely unless they are considered a national security threat. Immigration officials took Duong into custody again in 2003 but he was released a year later.
Duong had been reporting to immigration officials on a regular basis until 2014. He was arrested in November on allegations he shot a man in the chest and that he stole a motorcycle and resisted arrested.
The AP said Duong's immigration limbo is reminiscent of ex-convict Binh Thai Luc, who was charged in 2012 with killing five people in San Francisco after Vietnam refused to issue travel documents needed to deport him.
Authorities told the
Los Angeles Times that they do not believe that Duong or Tieu have left the Southern California area because of their connections in the local Vietnamese-American community and "may be embedded" there.
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