PrYSM started on November 8, 2001 when youth and local college students saw the need to build a social justice movement with the Southeast Asian youth community in Providence. A number of "OGs" (Original Gangsters) and ex-gangsters came to us in April of 2002 with a desperate call to fight deportation. A month earlier, the U.S. pressured the Cambodian government to sign a "repatriation agreement," making it possible to deport Cambodian refugees back to the country from which they fled a civil war and genocide. During the next eight months, PrYSM was fundamental in building a national coalition to fight deportation (the Southeast Asian Freedom Network) and organizing local protests against deportation. Read more about the deportation campaign on our vision page.

In 2005, we re-started our Deportation Campaign by setting up Legal Clinics and doing one-on-one case work to help deportees fight their deportation orders in Immigration Court. Read about these efforts at the Deportation Memories Project page.