A Gwinnett County man who survived the Vietnam War could be sent back to the country he fled after allegedly slugging a Vietnamese dignitary during protests last month in Washington.

Tuan Phuoc Le, 33, was arrested by federal authorities and accused of assaulting Nguyen Quoc Huy, vice chairman of the Vietnamese prime minister's office, outside the Willard InterContinental Washington hotel June 21. Huy was part of a historic delegation led by Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, the first such visit in the three decades since the Vietnam War ended.

Tuan Phuoc Le allegedly hit an official from Vietnam.

Le's arrest and possible deportation have sparked outrage in the Vietnamese community in the United States.

In fact, Le has become a cause célèbre, with supporters collecting thousands of dollars for his defense and collecting more than 900 signatures in an online petition.

"It's very sad, very miserable for him," said Duc Tran of Philadelphia, a spokesman for the Coalition for Human Rights and Religious Freedom in Vietnam, one of the organizations that led protests against Khai's visit. "His father was American. They should not send him back."

U.S. resident since '93

Le has lived in the United States since 1993 and has permanent residency. After the incident, he was held by immigration authorities in Virginia but has since been released and according to friends is back in Georgia working in construction. Attempts to interview Le at the Lilburn home where he is staying with a Vietnamese family were unsuccessful.

But the immigration charges are not his only worries. Le is scheduled to appear July 29 in U.S. District Court in Washington for a preliminary hearing on the felony assault charge.

According to the criminal complaint, Huy, who was being protected by the U.S. State Department's Diplomatic Security Service, was speaking with another member of the Vietnamese delegation when Le "without warning or provocation" hit him on the side of the face and knocked him to the ground. The complaint says Le admitted hitting Huy with his fist and said the official "was a Communist and he killed my U.S. Marine father in Vietnam or words to this effect."

The Vietnamese Embassy did not return several calls seeking comment, and Le's federal public defender on the criminal charge said he has advised his client not to talk to the media and declined to comment further.

In Vietnamese immigrant communities in Georgia and elsewhere, resentment against the Communist government runs strong. "The majority of Vietnamese immigrants are very anti-Communist," said Bang Thuy Bui, publisher of Atlanta Viet Bao, a monthly magazine based in Marietta. "They were the victims after 1975. They were arrested and sent to prison camps."

The Vietnamese population in metro Atlanta has also grown considerably. According to the 2000 census, the top three countries of birth for the foreign-born in Georgia were Mexico, India and Vietnam. Census estimates for 2003 report there were 27,185 Vietnamese-born residents in metro Atlanta, although some put those numbers much higher.

Le, they say, struck a blow — too literally, perhaps — against the Communists.

"We believe in nonviolence," said Tran of Philadelphia. "But he confronted the Communists."

He said he hopes it sends a strong message back home.

"The people in Vietnam are not free to do that," he said. "They live in fear. This information will go back to Vietnam, and they will say we can do this. This is very important symbolism. We show the Communists we are not fearing them anymore."

But Tran fears what will happen to Le if he is deported to Vietnam.

Human Rights Watch has criticized Vietnam for its dismal human rights record and says thousands of democracy activists, members of religious groups and government critics have been jailed or harassed. The organization had urged the Bush administration to press Khai to make reforms.

Violations unclear

Since 2000, nearly 60 Vietnamese citizens have been deported, most of them for criminal violations, said Ernestine Fobbs, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Le was held on $30,000 bond for alleged immigration violations that preceded his most recent troubles. Immigration officials declined to detail those violations, and Le's immigration attorney in Virginia, Parastoo G. Zahedi, said she did not know what they were. "At this point, we have not seen anything, specifically," she said.

Dat Vo, a Boston database engineer and a friend of Le's for more than a dozen years, said Le was not a violent person. Although not a witness to the incident, Vo wonders whether the delegation's visit dredged up painful memories from Le's childhood in Vietnam.

Vo, like Le, is Amerasian. Amerasians were often scorned by Vietnamese society and abandoned by their families.

Vo said that when Le was a child, he was harassed by a group of Communists. One day the group, armed with rifles with bayonets attached, forced him to undress and dance around in a circle, Vo said. To make him dance, Vo said, the group stabbed the ground around his feet with its bayonets, one time cutting him. Vo said Le carries those scars.

"He had a hard time," said Vo, who organized the online petition — Amerasian Friends of Tuan Le. But now, "he has really had time to improve and become a useful member of society."

Vo said Le moved to metro Atlanta from Boston about a year ago. For the last few months, Le has lived in Lilburn with a Vietnamese family.

'We want freedom'

Huy Nguyen, 16, who answered the door when a reporter went to the modest home in a cul-de-sac, said that Le, whom he called "uncle" even though there is no blood relation, sometimes talked about one day returning to Vietnam because life was so stressful in the United States. But Le also strongly disliked the Communists.

In that he found common cause.

"We want to see democracy in Vietnam," said Trung Le, a former South Vietnamese military officer who fled his country by boat to Hong Kong in 1975 and is now trying to help Tuan Phuoc Le (no relation). "We want freedom."

A metro Atlanta radio station, Tient Nuoc Toi, is also lending support.

Station director Tom Nguyen remembers meeting Le on the bus to Washington. Le impressed him as a nice man. "We are Vietnamese and he's Vietnamese," Nguyen said. "He needs help and we help. We treat him like a human. ? He's a good man to us. The government in Vietnam right now is a dictatorship."