More than a dozen Hmong and Laotian Americans living in the Detroit area received a letter summoning them to the city's Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office on July 30.
Many thought it was a request for a routine check-in. It wasn't, their families say.
Instead, the individuals were taken into ICE custody and have been detained ever since in northern Michigan, Texas and Louisiana. They are awaiting deportation to Laos, a country where the Hmong refugees have never set foot, but which U.S. officials say has agreed to take some detainees.
The Hmong individuals detained came to the U.S. as refugees in the 1970s and 1980s, most from refugee camps in Thailand. ICE says all have criminal records and removal orders, but families, local elected officials and immigrant rights advocates say they are being unfairly targeted.
"The families and elected officials accept that they had been convicted of a crime, but they served their time, and they deserve a second chance," said Christine Sauve, policy and communications manager at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center.
A spokesperson for ICE, in an email Friday to The Detroit News, said the agency detained "a known gang member who obstructed a murder investigation, multiple child sex abusers, drug traffickers and other Laotian nationals with criminal histories" in the July 30 operation. The spokesperson did not clarify whether all individuals detained had criminal records or provide the names of all detainees.
Many of those detained received removal orders after being convicted of crimes years ago, but were never deported because neither Laos nor Thailand considered them citizens, according to Sauve. Instead, they were required to report for annual check-ins with ICE.
Family members and local elected officials on Friday held a press conference to argue against the deportations.
"This past week has been a nightmare for these family members," said state Rep. Mai Xiong, a Democrat who represents Warren, Roseville and St. Clair Shores, at the press conference.
Xiong is herself Hmong American, a refugee who fled Laos with her family at a young age. Like hers, the families of the Hmong detainees fled to the U.S. from United Nations-run refugee camps in Thailand, where they went after being persecuted in Laos for their role in the CIA-backed "Secret War" in the 1960s and 1970s.
Under the Trump administration, Xiong said, things have changed. She believes that Laos may accept the deportees in exchange for being excluded from a travel ban list. The ICE spokesperson said the agency recently obtained the necessary travel documents to remove the detainees to Laos.
At the press conference at the Hannan Center in Detroit, Xiong, State Sen. Stephanie Chang and state Rep. Donovan McKinney — both Democrats who represent Detroit districts — joined the family members of detainees Wa Kang Lor and Sufeng Yang to call for the release of the Hmong refugees being held by ICE.
After reporting to the office for what they thought was a routine check-in, Xiong said, the individuals were detained.
In a matter of days, ICE transported the individuals from Detroit to North Lake Processing Center in northern Michigan, then to Port Isabel Service Processing Center in Texas. Two days ago, ICE transferred them to the Alexandria Staging Facility in Louisiana, where Xiong expects the next step will be deportation.
"It's like trying to find missing people," she told The News. She called on ICE to be more transparent about who had been detained and when they might be deported.
Maiyia Xiong, the wife of Wa Kong Lor, one of the detainees, was overcome with emotion as she stepped to the podium, so Rep. Xiong read her prepared statement.
"I never imagined it would be the last time I would see him," she had written.
When they reported to the ICE office, she said, a woman took her husband's driver's license. "Within minutes, his name was called," Xiong said. "He walked through the door to the back room and never returned."
Xiong and Lor have four children. Without him, she said, she faces the "unimaginable task of explaining to them that they may never see their father again."
The ICE spokesperson said Lor was arrested in Pontiac in 2007 for breaking and entering a vehicle, drug possession and carrying an unlawful firearm. He was sentenced to at least 5 months in prison and received a removal order.
Anissa Lee, 20, also spoke. She is the daughter of Sufeng Yang, a Macomb County resident who was also detained on July 30. She came up to the podium, visibly upset, carrying a poster with her father's face on it.
"The U.S. is the only place he's ever known, his only home," said Lee, her voice breaking. "He's not just a resident here, he's a taxpayer, a provider and a caregiver."
Yang takes care of his 82-year-old mother, Lee said, buying her groceries and picking up her medications. "Without him, she won't be able to get by," she said.
Yang, according to ICE, was convicted of robbery in Toledo in 2007 and sentenced to three years in prison. Like Lor, he was given a removal order, but never deported.
One of the detainees, Lue Yang, 47, of St. Johns, had his criminal record expunged under a Michigan "Clean Slate" law in 2018. After he came to the United States as an asylum seeker in the 1980s, he pled guilty in 2001 as an accessory to a home invasion and was issued a removal order.
Since then, Lue Yang has turned his life around, advocates say. He serves as president of the Hmong Family Association, a nonprofit that provides services and programming to the Hmong community. According to a letter from more than two dozen Michigan lawmakers to ICE Detroit field director Kevin Raycraft, Yang is the "primary breadwinner" for a family of eight.
He is the only detainee currently being held in Michigan, at the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin.
McKinney, whose state House district includes parts of Detroit and Warren, sees the detentions and likely deportations as civil rights violations.
As a result of the ICE operation, he said, families are left knowing little to no information about where their loved ones are being held or how they are doing. It's cruel."
Aisa Villarosa, an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, which is supporting legal advocacy for the detainees, worries that they will become stateless. She says travel documents are just part of the removal process, citing a number of cases in Laos and nearby Bhutan in which detainees were turned away.
"The Trump administration has made its priorities clear, abusing its power to attack all of us. None of us are safe when families are ripped apart," she said.
Xiong and Chang said they sent a letter to Raycraft asking him to "immediately release" the Hmong detainees. In total, 28 Michigan lawmakers signed the letter, including Ranjeev Puri, the Democratic House minority leader; and Gabriela Santiago-Romero, who represents southwest Detroit on the City Council.
"ICE should expend its resources by targeting individuals who are truly a threat, instead of indiscriminately detaining and deporting immigrants and refugees without consideration for their contributions to society and our economy or their personal history," Xiong and Chang wrote.
bwarren@detroitnews.com