Vietnam police arrest U.S. deportee on suspicion of murdering girlfriend

Reuters

Published May 10, 2021 05:45

HANOI (Reuters) - A Vietnamese man deported from the United States under a push by the Trump administration to expel immigrants convicted of crimes in the United States has been arrested on suspicion of murder in Vietnam.

Bui Thanh Hung, a Vietnamese-American who was deported from the United States in December 2017, was arrested by police after attacking his girlfriend with a knife in the southern province of Tien Giang, state media reported on May 7.

Hung, an Amerasian born in 1973 to a Vietnamese mother and an American soldier who died during the Vietnam War, was convicted of domestic violence in the United States in 2010, he told Reuters in a 2018 interview.

He spent six years in a U.S. prison before being deported to Vietnam in 2017.

The expulsions were carried out despite a 2008 agreement that Vietnamese immigrants who arrived in the United States prior to 1995, many of whom had supported the now defunct U.S.-backed state of South Vietnam, would not be sent back.

Hung admitted murder after his arrest, state media said.

Under Vietnam's penal code, the penalty for murder can range between a minimum sentence of seven years in prison to the death penalty.