Throughout the late 80s and 90s, a gang of young Vietnamese refugees cut a bloody swath through America’s Asian underworld.  They were the lost children of the Vietnam War, severed from their families by violence and cast adrift in a strange land. They took their name from a slogan they had seen on helicopters and helmets of U.S. soldiers; and it perfectly reflected their dark, nihilistic worldview: "Born to Kill."

Born to Kill traces the rise of this terrifying new criminal phenomenon through the eyes of Tinh Ngo, a young refugee born in South Vietnam.  At the age of eleven, Tinh Ngo was sent out to sea by his parents, part of a massive flotilla of postwar refugees known as the “boat people.”  Tinh spent years in squalid refugee camps and survived a series of failed foster homes in the United States before his arrival as a would-be gangster...