{"id":78315,"date":"2025-12-31T07:32:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T15:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=78315"},"modified":"2025-12-31T07:32:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T15:32:08","slug":"some-northern-california-mien-refugees-grapple-with-renewed-fears-of-statelessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=78315","title":{"rendered":"Some Northern California Mien Refugees Grapple With Renewed Fears of Statelessness"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Shasta Scout<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The North State\u2019s Mien population took root as families sought escape from an American bombing campaign during the Laotian Civil War. Now, 40 years after resettling, some are at risk of being forcibly returned to a country they have little connection to.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A mural at Redding\u2019s new Public Market commemorates the journey of Mien refugees from Laos to Shasta County. Photo by Annelise Pierce.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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By Nevin Kallepalli<\/strong><\/p>\n

REDDING, Calif. \u2014 \u201cThey flew so low, as high as a tree,\u201d Weun Ayn Lee said, describing the sight of American bomber planes peppering the highlands of Laos a half a century ago. The 58-year old pharmacist, who was just a boy at the time, conjured his memories while speaking with\u00a0Shasta Scout<\/em>\u00a0this month from his home in Redding, California.<\/p>\n

It was the 1970s, and President Richard Nixon was overseeing\u00a0Operation Barrel Roll<\/a>, a massive aerial bombardment campaign of Laos. All the while, domestic support for the war across the eastern border in Vietnam was rapidly deteriorating, as headlines of\u00a0U.S.-led massacres<\/a>\u00a0shocked the nation. To this day, Laos remains the\u00a0most-bombed-per-capita country<\/a>\u00a0in history with 2 million tons of explosives dropped over nine bloody years. The operation was initially kept secret from the American people, but was\u00a0revealed by the Pentagon Papers<\/a>\u00a0in 1971.<\/p>\n

Like other largely rural ethnic minorities splayed across Southeast Asia, the Mien people worked the mountainous terrain of Laos\u2019 countryside, after originally migrating from southern China in the late 19th century. In 1964, three years before Lee was born, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the first assault on Laos by air in an unsuccessful attempt to scourge\u00a0Soviet-armed communists<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 who would ultimately defeat the\u00a0CIA-backed Royal Lao Army<\/a>\u00a0in 1975. To aid the anticommunist front, the U.S. recruited guerrilla units, including\u00a0child soldiers<\/a>, from the Hmong and Mien tribes, the latter of which Lee\u2019s family belonged to.<\/p>\n

When the U.S. withdrew from its Laotian proxy war in 1973, the Mien and Hmong were left defenseless against the communist government they had fought at the behest of the Americans. Many were later interned in harsh \u201cre-education camps<\/a>\u201d where thousands perished. As for Lee, his family ended up in a different kind of camp \u2014\u00a0a refugee camp in Thailand<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 after trekking some 10 days to escape reprisals. He was nine.<\/p>\n

It was in Thailand that Lee first attended school, though his family only stayed in the camp a few months before finding accommodations with relatives elsewhere.\u00a0\u201cI remember they didn\u2019t have any houses, anything like that\u2026 you had to build your house with some kind of, you know, big leaf from a tree,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n

Unlike Lee\u2019s family, most Mien who reached refugee camps stayed for years, where some bore children. But despite having Thai-born offspring, entire families remained trapped in perpetual statelessness, unable to seek a higher education or a driver\u2019s license without the citizenship documentation of any country. That is, until the U.S. Congress passed the\u00a0Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act<\/a>\u00a0in 1975. With this assistance, more than 400,000 Southeast Asian refugees eventually settled across America. Thus began the Mien, Vietnamese, Hmong, and Khmer communities of Shasta County and the greater North State.<\/p>\n

Lee, now a naturalized U.S. citizen who contributes his time to the nonprofit\u00a0Shasta County Mien\u00a0<\/a>Community<\/a>, says the feeling of insecurity from wandering between nations has never gone away.<\/p>\n

He arrived in America as an adult after living in Thailand until he was 19. But for other Mien who came to rural northern California as children, Lee said, the readjustment period was even more difficult. His peers that came earlier had to learn a new language, and use their language skills to take on significant responsibility for their families. \u201cThey had to help their parents navigate all the things they had to do to live, like go to the doctor, fill out some kind of form for assistance, or anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over recent decades, the Mien community has made immense strides in the United States, but some who came here as children are now facing the imminent threat of deportation. \u201cThey have families, they have kids. All the kids are citizens, their wife is a citizen,\u201d Lee said. \u201cThey work, they pay taxes. But now they live in fear. Every day they live in fear that anytime they can be deported to Laos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Lee described the Southeast Asian community\u2019s reaction as mixed toward President Donald Trump\u2019s deployment of ICE to crack down on immigrant communities \u2014 amid the ramifications being experienced by Mien people.<\/p>\n

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Refugees at the Lubhini Transit Centre in Bangkok, Thailand. There are about 2,000 refugees in this camp from Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos and they will be going to the United States, Canada, Italy and France. UN Photo\/John Isaac. July 1, 1979<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Another phase of statelessness<\/h2>\n

Shasta Scout<\/em>\u00a0was unable to directly interview Shasta\u2013based Mien residents at risk of deportation, due to their fears that even an anonymous interview might expose them to expanding surveillance by\u00a0Immigration and Customs Enforcement<\/a>. But a non-Mien community member, who provides support to the local Southeast Asian population, attested to the bureaucratic tightrope that some are subjected to.<\/p>\n

Trent Copland is a retired educator who taught English as a second language for 30 years at Enterprise High School. In his free time now, he accompanies local Latin American and Southeast Asian immigrants \u2014 some of whom are his former students \u2014 to their\u00a0required check-ins<\/a>\u00a0with U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services in Sacramento.<\/p>\n

Copland\u2019s reason for providing an escort is somewhat practical. He makes the two-and-a-half hour drive each way in his own vehicle to prevent his immigrant contacts from having their vehicles towed in Sacramento should they be unexpectedly arrested during check-in, as has\u00a0increasingly occurred nationwide<\/a>. If that scenario plays out, Copland can also act as a liaison to break the news to their families back in Redding. Check-ins are sometimes quick and routine, he said, but other times more menacing. When his immigrant friends have been called inside to face an extended interview with an ICE agent, Copland has at times accompanied them, likening the experience to having a sword held over their head.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went into the office and they\u2019re playing good cop, bad cop,\u201d Copland said, recounting the story of a former student\u2019s check-in. \u201cWell, what do you think,\u201d they said, \u201cshould we put him in jail? Deport him? Oh, well, you know, he\u2019s got a clean record. Maybe we should let him go. He\u2019s got a wife and a 15 year old daughter,\u201d he continued, mimicking the kind of conversation that can transpire.<\/p>\n

For some, the threat of deportation is due to the lingering effects of a crime or crimes they committed \u2014 and served time for \u2014 many years ago, in their late teens or early 20s.<\/p>\n

As Copland observed as a high school teacher in the 1980s, his Mien students\u2019 lives and relationships to authority were extraordinarily complicated. On the one hand, his students from immigrant backgrounds tended to come from stricter and more conservative family structures than their American classmates. On the other hand, some Mien and Hmong teenagers \u2014 whose families were mired in poverty after arriving in the U.S. with nothing \u2014 joined gangs\u00a0for a sense of belonging<\/a>, or later resorted to illicit economies like drug dealing or marijuana cultivation to make fast money.<\/p>\n

For some who arrived in the U.S. as children before committing crimes as youth,\u00a0their specific criminal offenses have affected their immigration status. That\u2019s because when a non-citizen is convicted of certain types of crimes, their\u00a0refugee status<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0green card can be revoked<\/a>, rendering them undocumented upon release from incarceration, and forcing them to effectively begin their refugee or citizenship process over again.<\/p>\n

That process is anything but simple, as explained by a\u00a0DOJ-accredited immigration representative<\/a>\u00a0who works with clients across Northern California. They requested to remain anonymous due to fears of being targeted by the federal government. It costs thousands of dollars just to submit the required paperwork for permanent residency, a cost that skyrockets with the addition of legal fees for both criminal and immigration attorneys \u2014 structural barriers made even more difficult to overcome amid the stigma of being formerly incarcerated. Some complete the process and others don\u2019t, and many go on to accomplish successful careers and raise American children regardless.<\/p>\n

In some instances, incarcerated immigrants aren\u2019t even given the opportunity to remake a life for themselves when they leave state custody. Though California\u2019s sanctuary laws prohibit state law enforcement from coordinating with ICE, in 2022, the ACLU found that the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation \u201ccolluded\u201d with immigration enforcement, at times transferring people\u00a0from state prisons into ICE facilities<\/a>\u00a0for indeterminate amounts of time. One of Copland\u2019s contacts was among those transferred from a state prison to a federal prison and detained for years. They declined to speak further for this story, citing safety concerns.<\/p>\n

Copeland reflected on the dual realities that while immigrants commit crimes at a\u00a0much lower rate than American-born citizens<\/a>,\u00a0when they do, they may have to pay a much heavier price for their actions. \u201cThe punishment has to fit the crime,\u201d Copeland said, assessing the destructive domino effect that follows these immigrants well beyond their convictions and could lead to them being separated from their families, including their spouses and children.<\/p>\n

The Facebook group \u201cReturning Laos Foundation<\/a>\u201d provides insights on the journey Laotian deportees have faced after being forced to leave the U.S. Some ask in comments for information on whether\u00a0passengers will be shackled on deportation flights<\/a>, and intel on how to\u00a0transfer 401k and retirement funds<\/a>\u00a0to people who have been expelled from U.S. borders.<\/p>\n

Other posts are more reflective.\u00a0\u201cAfter days of travel, uncertainty, and waiting, our loved ones are finally on the ground,\u201d one woman wrote about her\u00a0family landing safely in Vientiane<\/a>, the capital of Laos. \u201cFor some, this is a place they\u2019ve never known, only heard about through stories. For others, it\u2019s a return filled with mixed emotions: relief, grief, fear, and hope all at once.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevin reports for Shasta Scout as a member of the\u00a0California Local News Fellowship.<\/a>\u00a0This story is part of \u201cAqu\u00ed Estamos\/Here We Stand<\/a>,\u201d a collaborative reporting project of American Community Media and community news outlets statewide.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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