Newsom’s latest pardon shields attempted murder convict from ICE deportation

California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a pardon Friday to Somboon Phaymany, erasing his 1997 conviction on 10 counts of premeditated attempted murder and effectively shielding him from being deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Mr. Phaymany, a Cambodian citizen, was involved in a gang-related drive-by shooting as a 19-year-old, earning him a lengthy criminal record.

That conviction stripped him of his green card and made him eligible for deportation, which ICE was trying to do in early 2020 when the coronavirus struck and a judge granted him a pandemic release.

Now Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, said he believes Mr. Phaymany has rehabilitated and granted him a pardon, erasing the conviction. Homeland Security said that erases the justification for ICE to deport him.

“Governor Newsom pardoning an illegal alien convicted of attempted murder so he can remain in our country is absolute insanity,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told The Washington Times. “These are the criminal illegal aliens he and his sanctuary politicians are protecting. He is putting the lives of all Americans at risk.”

She said: “Somboon Phaymany lost his green card following his conviction for attempted murder and assault with a firearm. Following the conviction, he was placed in removal proceedings and issued a final order of removal by a judge. Gavin Newsom’s pardon took away this attempted murderer’s qualifying convictions that made him removable from the U.S.”

In his pardon decree, the governor declared Mr. Phaymany has reformed, citing “the work he has done since to transform himself.”

Mr. Newsom added, “He has provided evidence that he is living an upright life and has demonstrated his fitness for restoration of civil rights and responsibilities,” boilerplate language he uses in many of his pardons.

Mr. Newsom’s press office declined to answer questions about Mr. Phaymany’s case in particular.

“The governor reviews each case on its own merits,” Diana Crofts-Pelayo told The Times.

Mr. Newsom has made a practice of using pardons to block deportations.

It works in cases where someone was living here as a legal immigrant at the time of his or her crime. That crime can make them deportable. But if the crime is forgiven, the grounds for deportability can evaporate.

Cambodians have been particular beneficiaries of Mr. Newsom’s clemency over his years in office.

Mr. Phaymany came to the U.S. as a young child. He was 19 at the time of the March 5, 1996, shooting, which court documents described as a gang-on-gang attack.

Mr. Phaymany was hanging out with associates of the Oriental Boy Soldiers gang. They were retaliating against a rival, the Oriental Killer Boys, after an OKB member shattered an OBS car window.

Two carloads of OBS members cruised into the parking lot of a pool hall, and people from both vehicles opened fire. Mr. Phaymany was in the back seat of one of the cars, a Honda Prelude, and he’d lent a 9 mm pistol to one of the shooters.

Eleven gunshots sprayed the parking lot, sometimes within 20 feet of their targets, but miraculously nobody was hurt.

Mr. Phaymany didn’t fire any shots, and he argued he hadn’t planned to be part of a drive-by. He was there only to ensure the pistol — which belonged to his cousin — was returned.

He was convicted of 10 counts of attempted murder, 18 counts of assault with a firearm and assault with a semiautomatic firearm, and three counts of conspiracy to commit assault.

He was sentenced to two terms of life with the possibility of parole, plus two one-year term enhancements.

That began a tsunami of legal challenges.

A state appeals court later tossed two of the conspiracy convictions, finding they were all part of the same conspiracy. But Mr. Phaymany’s other attempts to erase his convictions failed at the state and federal levels.

In 2018, he was picked up by ICE and sent to Adelanto Detention Center in California.

He would remain there for two years, earning a release in April 2020, in the early days of the pandemic.

Three years later, he was part of a federal class action lawsuit arguing the private corporation that runs Adelanto had sickened him by spraying a harsh cleansing chemical near where prisoners were eating.

That case is in settlement negotiations.