Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 53 (2021) Ghosts in America: Working Towards Building a Legal Framework for Stateless Individuals in the United States Vietnam to deport Vietnamese nationals. 278 Under the agreement, the United States government pays the cost of repatriation under the agreement and the Vietnamese government issues travel documents authorizing return, once the deportee is determined to be a national of Vietnam. 279 Article 2, Section 2 of the agreement exempted Vietnamese citizens “who arrived in the United States before July 12, 1995, the date on which diplomatic relations were re-established between the United States Government and the Vietnamese Government.” 280 In 2017, the Trump administration unilaterally determined this exemption did not apply to convicted criminals. 281 The Vietnamese government stopped issuing the required travel documents and the United States government had to suspend the repatriation program. 282 The United States also entered into a similar agreement with Cambodia in 2001.283 Not only is the effectiveness of these types of agreements questionable, they also impose substantial emotional and mental burdens on the individuals they affect. 284 Individuals with final orders of removal who are not deportable live day-to-day not knowing if or when they would be deported. This imposes a toll on an individual’s mental health. 285 Further, many stateless individuals have been here since they were children and now many of them have partners, United States citizen-children, and steady jobs. 286 Forcing them to leave the United States and return to an unfamiliar country would be devastating for them given that their entire lives are rooted in the United States. 278. Price, supra note 180, at 481. 279. Id. 280. Ellen K. Boegel, Donald Trump and the Complicated Diplomacy of Deportation, AMERICA THE JESUIT REVIEW (July 28, 2019), https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2019/01/28/donald-trump-andcomplicated-diplomacy-deportation [https://perma.cc/Z767-RNK9]. 281. Id. 282. Id. 283. Price, supra note 180, at 481–2. 284. See generally NAT’L ASIAN PAC. AMERICAN WOMEN’S F. & SE. ASIA RES. ACTION CTR., DREAMS DETAINED, IN HER WORDS: THE EFFECTS OF DETENTION AND DEPORTATION ON SOUTHEAST ASIAN AMERICAN WOMEN AND FAMILIES 4–20 (2008). 285. Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, The Devastating Impact of Deportation on Southeast Asian Americans, https://www.searac.org/wpcontent/uploads/2018/04/The-Devastating-Impact-of-Deportation-onSoutheast-Asian-Americans-1.pdf [https://perma.cc/6224-82YB]. 286. See Shannon Dooling, 40 Years After the Vietnam War, Some Refugees Face Deportation Under Trump, NPR (Mar. 4, 2019, 9:00 AM), https://www.npr.org/2019/03/04/699177071/40-years-after-thevietnam-war-some-refugees-face-deportation-under-trump [https://perma.cc/P6DA-TKCL]. 387