Liv Bridge
A mom who has lived in the US since she was an infant has been deported to a country where she's never even been to and doesn't speak the language.
Ma Yang, a Hmong American woman, has lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, since she was just eight months old.
However, the 37-year-old was reportedly deported last week to Laos, a country where she has never visited and has no connection with, and is being kept in a rooming house surrounded by military officials.
The mom-of-five doesn't speak the Lao language, has no family or friends in the country, and says she is running low on her diabetes medication while guards hold on to her documentation.
Advert
Ms Yang was born in Thailand to Hmong refugees after the Vietnam War but became a US resident with legal residency status up until she pleaded guilty to participating in a drugs trafficking operation.
Yang said: "The United States sent me back to die. I don't even know where to go. I don't even know what to do," reports Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Her predicament comes as the Trump administration is ramping up deportations in a bid to 'protect the American people against invasion.'
To this end, Donald Trump is also looking at enforcing an 18th century wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to fast-track deportations without any legal barriers.
The law would permit the US to deport non-citizens who have been accused of being gang members or involved in some criminal activity without any court hearings taking place.
Yang believes she may be one of the first Hmong Americans to be shipped to Laos in recent yeas, as the Southeast Asian country has long been deemed 'uncooperative' when it came to accepting deportees - and federal data shows there was not a single person who was deported to the country in the last fiscal year.
The mom said she didn't know her prosecution would jeopardize her legal residency in the US, having worked in the States as a nail technician to support her children, aged between six to 22, and support her partner of 16 years, Michael Bub, who is disabled and a US citizen.
During the pandemic, the family relocated into a house which prosecutors alleged was part of a marijuana trafficking operation.
Yang was accused of helping to count and package cash that was shipped to suppliers in Canada and spent two and half years behind bars for her involvement.
"I made a mistake, and I know that it was wrong," Yang admitted. "But I served the time for it already."
Yet at the end of her sentence, she was transferred to an ICE detention facility in Minnesota where she agreed to the deportation order to Laos, but didn't believe it would happen.
She was later sent to a jail in Brazil, Indiana, and a holding facility in Chicago before she realized she was being deported to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, as of March 6.
Yang further claims she was forced to sign a document stating she wouldn't return to the US, and was prohibited from contacting anyone for five days upon arriving in the Laotian capital.
A military guard has also apparently told her she could leave if she wanted, but she says she is unable to do anything without her paperwork.
"How do I rent, or buy, or anything, with no papers?" Yang said. "I'm a nobody right now."
"I just keep getting screwed in this system," she added, "How do you [the US] send us back when we fought for you guys? How is this OK?"