Ny Nourn is a Cambodian refugee and domestic violence survivor who was incarcerated for life without the possibility of parole in California.
In prison, she worked to advocate for and build the leadership of incarcerated people. After 16 years of incarceration, Ny was granted parole but then transferred to immigration detention. After months of community mobilization, Ny left detention in November 2017. After her release, Ny became the Yuri Kochiyama Fellow and Community Advocate at Advancing Justice–Asian Law Caucus, where she developed an anti-deportation movement in response to ICE raids targeting southeast Asian refugees. In 2020, recognizing Ny’s community work and leadership, Governor Newsom pardoned Ny, preventing her deportation to Cambodia. In 2021, Ny graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from San Francisco State University. She is now co-director of the Asian Prisoner Support Committee, which supports incarcerated and released Asian and Pacific Islanders and their families with resources and community-based reentry services, including organizing anti-deportation campaigns.
She also serves as a steering committee member of Survived and Punished, a prison abolition organization that focuses on freeing criminalized survivors and exposing the integrated relationship between systems of punishment and gender violence.
