SANTA ANA, Calif. — One of three fugitive inmates who escaped from a California jail last week was ordered deported to Vietnam in 1998 but has been in this country racking up a lengthy rap sheet, immigration officials said Tuesday.
Bac Duong, 43, came to the United States legally in 1991 but was ordered removed seven years later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement.
The order came shortly after he served time in state prison on a 1997 burglary conviction, state records show.
The case is one of thousands involving immigrants convicted of crimes who federal authorities want to deport but haven’t been able to because their native countries wouldn’t take them back.
Immigration officials said they took Duong into custody in 2003 and released him the following year. He continued to check in with authorities as required until 2014, the statement said.
During that time, he also faced a series of charges involving burglary and drug possession and did stints in state prison. Last year, he was charged with attempted murder and assault in the shooting of a man outside a home in Santa Ana.
Federal officials can’t keep immigrants locked up indefinitely while they await deportation. Most must be released after six months, except those accused of posing a terrorist threat or deemed especially dangerous.
For many years, Vietnam did not honor U.S. government requests to repatriate deportees. In 2008, Vietnam agreed to provide travel documents for deportees but only those who entered the U.S. since July 1995.
Duong escaped from the Orange County jail on Friday along with Jonathan Tieu, 20, and Hossein Nayeri, 37, by sawing through a quarter-inch-thick grill on a dormitory wall and climbing through plumbing tunnels to reach an unguarded area of the roof. There, the men moved aside razor wire and rappelled to the ground using bed linen.
All three are considered dangerous and were awaiting trial in separate violent crimes.
Authorities have focused their search in the county’s sizable Vietnamese-American community, where sheriff’s officials say two of the men have ties to gangs.
The men were gone for as long as 16 hours before officials noticed they were missing from the common dorm they share with more than 60 other inmates at Orange County Central Jail. An attack on a guard delayed a Friday night head count further.
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