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Indianapolis Star
4 days ago
- General
- Indianapolis Star
Doyel: A box comes in the mail. Turns out, you didn't know your dad as well as you thought
They told me about that first birthday – the first one since he died. They said it would hit like a train. They were right. My dad would've turned 80 on Sunday, July 27. It has been nearly nine months since he died, and for nine months there has been grieving. But this is also true, what they say: It gets better with time, the hurt – the shock – that Robert Leon Doyel, my dad, the hero of my childhood, is gone and not coming back. It is the way of the world for all of us, losing a parent or someone else we love, but your pain cannot lessen mine. Nor can mine lessen yours. The things people tell you, they're true. Everyone grieves in their own way. My way has been gutless, hiding behind the gratitude – it was and still is real – that his suffering is over, and hiding some more when I chose not to fly to Florida to attend his service. His memorial was held several months after he died on Nov. 1, and by then I'd moved onto something like denial: He's gone, he's not coming back, and I'm doing OK up here in Indiana. Dad's last decade was not pleasant, starting with a car accident that left him with an uncountable number of broken bones – doctors found new, healed fractures for years – shortly after he retired. The years got worse, and his final 18 months were full of physical pain and emotional confusion. It was heartbreaking, hearing him cry on the phone in pain or mental torment, certain that everyone was out to get him, wondering why I wasn't coming to Florida to rescue him from the hospital where he was being held against his will. My dad was a lawyer, then a judge. He had a brilliant mind, legal and otherwise, and he had an argument to make on behalf of his freedom, if I would just get him before the proper authorities. Why wasn't I coming? Well, Dad, I was there last week. Do you remember? He'd start crying. No, I wasn't going to Florida to attend that service, several months after he died. It was going to hurt too much. It was safer up here in Indiana. It really does get better with time. Everyone tells you that. Nobody told tell me about the box in the mail. Nobody told me about that. From October: Rose's death stabs at my childhood, but rekindles my Dad's forgotten love language Obituary from November: He desegregated youth baseball. Veteran, teacher, judge. I called him dad. He never told me about the sniper fire at Da Nang. My dad was a U.S. Navy cook at Vietnam. That's what he told me – that's what he was. And he was proud of his service, overseeing the galley at Tien Sha Peninsula, on an old French army camp at the foot of Monkey Mountain. Dad was responsible for the feeding of 10,000 soldiers and other personnel every day. He told me that. He never told me about the time the North Vietnamese knocked out power in the galley, or about his decision to utilize charcoal grills and other temporary power sources to feed thousands of soldiers, some on floating galleys on the river, while sniper fire was coming from the jungle. He didn't tell me about receiving a Navy Achievement Medal with the Combat V, or the citation written Dec. 9, 1969, that congratulates my dad for his 'ingenuity and resourcefulness' at Da Nang and ends like this: Lieutenant (second grade) DOYEL's exemplary professionalism and devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest tradition of the United States Naval Service. E.R. Zumwalt, Jr. Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy Commander U.S. Naval Forces in Vietnam It was in the cardboard box, that medal and letter. Don't remember seeing the letter before now, but I remember the medal. As a boy I played with it – never noticed that little 'V' – and with his other Navy service stripes and medals, pins and cufflinks. Didn't know what any of it meant. Look, I was 7. This was Norman, Oklahoma, in the 1970s. Dad and I talked about OU football, about Barry Switzer and Lee Roy Selmon and Billy Sims. We didn't talk about Da Nang. From 2017: The Christmas when Gregg Doyel learned the truth about Grandma, and Dad The box showed up three days before his birthday. I knew it was coming – his wife of 35 years, Chelle, had told me to be on the lookout – but it sat on my floor for 24 hours before I had the guts to open it. What's another thing people say? Something about some doors being better left unopened. Same goes for boxes. But not this box, as it turns out. The tears came, sure, along with fresh salvos of shock and sadness. Nine months, Dad? Some days it feels like it's been just a few weeks. Other days, feels like years. You form a callous, and along comes a time capsule that peels it off, teaching you about the man you thought you knew so well. And I did know my dad well. Knew his strengths, and his weaknesses. Faults? Oh, he had faults. I could write a book about mistakes he's made. Could write a book about mine, too. This box didn't have any of his faults. Don't be afraid of it, G-Pistol, Dad could've told me, using the nickname he gave me as a kid; this box won't hurt you. These were papers and pictures and, sure, awards he'd saved over the years. His military file is in here. So are his academic records. Top 5 percent of his class at the University of Oklahoma – and the OU law school? Didn't know that. When he took the bar exam in Georgia in 1987, he received the highest score in the state? Didn't know. Here's his diploma from the University of Oklahoma College of Law. Didn't know he was managing editor of the Oklahoma Law Review. A busy man, my dad. What did I know of him being busy? He played catch in the backyard whenever I asked, which was every day in Norman and Oxford, Mississippi, where we kicked field goals at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium and shot baskets at Tad Smith Coliseum. More of the same in New Glarus, Wisconsin, and then Macon, Georgia, for my high school years. Baseball, basketball, soccer. He had all the time in the world. When did he have the time to earn 1976 Jaycee of the Year with the Norman Jaycees? When he did he have time in 1983 to earn a Doctor of Juridical Science from the law school at Wisconsin? To be on a legal team in Georgia that argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in November 1986? That was my junior year of high school. The Supreme Court? From 2018: Youth baseball in Oxford, Miss., was segregated in 1978. Here's what Dad did. From 2020: Celebrating Father's Day in a sports world getting smaller and smaller He moved to Florida the next year, leaving me in Macon for my senior year of high school. I was supposed to live with a friend's family, but when that fell through my dad showed some of his ingenuity and resourcefulness by finding a furnished apartment and putting me there for the year. I was playing soccer and baseball and working two jobs in Macon while he was in Florida, working as a lawyer. Here in the box is a plaque from the Polk County Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, recognizing him for serving as president from 1990-91. He became a circuit court judge in 1995, and here in the box is a commendation from the chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court, Harry Lee Anstead, 'for exemplary service (and) providing leadership within Florida's Court System in the area of Domestic Violence.' Did he ever tell me he was president of the local defense lawyers? Or honored by the Florida Supreme Court? I knew he was a charming rascal. Did I know someone had given him a desk nameplate that confirmed it? Bob Doyel Charming Rascal No, I didn't. But I knew he cared deeply about victims of domestic violence. Bench assignments in Florida's Tenth Judicial Circuit rotated every few years – Felonies, Civil and Family Law – and nobody wanted to work in Family Law. But there was no getting out of it, and when Dad was assigned Family Law in 1997 he was miserable about it, unsettled to hear about the suffering of so many women and children. But he found his calling. When it was time to rotate bench assignments a few years later, Dad asked to stay where he was in Family Law. His colleagues were more than happy to leave him there. Here in the box is a plaque from his fellow judges in the Tenth Judicial Circuit: In grateful appreciation for your dedication and distinguished service as Chairperson of Polk County's Domestic Violence Task Force Another plaque: In appreciation to Bob Doyel for your dedicated service as president of the Ritz Theatre 100, 1990-99 Ritz Theatre? Really, Dad? In his retirement my dad wrote one book about domestic violence that was published, and dictated a work of fiction – dictated it; think about that – that should've been. Apparently he was a prolific writer of letters to the editor, too; they're in the box. He clipped them, along with stories I'd written for the IndyStar that were picked up by the Lakeland Ledger. He even clipped a rebuttal letter in the Ledger from a woman who disagreed with his letter arguing for 'free long-acting, reversible contraception (LARC) to reduce teen pregnancies and abortions.' Here's something else, but not a plaque. More like a pin, a trinket. Wait, is this... A key to the city of Winter Haven, Florida? This is how I'm spending what would've been the weekend of his 80th birthday, digging through military files and pins and papers he'd been saving for 50 years – learning about a U.S. hero on the Tien Sha Peninsula, and the hero of my childhood. Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Threads, or on BlueSky and Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar, or at Subscribe to the free weekly Doyel on Demand newsletter.
CNN
6 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
A US war forced her parents to flee. Now, a Wisconsin mother has been deported back to the country she never called home
Ma Yang arrived at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in late February with a sinking feeling in her stomach. Several days earlier, she had received a call from ICE asking her to report to her local field office in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – more than six months before she was due for her annual check-in. President Donald Trump had been inaugurated for a second time and his administration had already moved ahead with its promise to deport millions of immigrants from the US. 'In my gut, I already knew something was off,' Yang told CNN. Yang, a 37-year-old mother of five, was detained that day and deported two weeks later to Laos – a small country in Southeast Asia that her parents had fled four decades earlier. Yang had never been to Laos, is not a Laos citizen and does not speak Lao. Born in a refugee camp in Thailand, Yang resettled in the US with her parents and older siblings when she was 8 months old. She is Hmong, an ethnic minority group in Southeast Asia who helped the CIA during its so-called Secret War which ran parallel to the Vietnam War. Many Hmong, including Yang's parents, fled Laos after the fall of Saigon. Yang lived for decades in the US legally as a permanent resident until she pleaded guilty to marijuana-related charges in 2022. Under US law, non-citizens can lose their visas if convicted of certain crimes. After serving her sentence, Yang was transferred to an ICE detention facility and released in 2023 with a removal order from the US. Yang said her lawyer at the time assured her the removal order would not be acted upon – deportations to Southeast Asia were exceedingly rare. But that appears to be changing. Months into Trump's second term, as his administration ramps up its immigration crackdown, hundreds of people have been quietly deported to Laos and Vietnam, immigrant rights advocates say, in a stark departure from decades of US immigration policy in the region. The reported uptick in deportations to Southeast Asia comes as the Trump administration ramps up pressure on countries, including some with poor human rights records, to accept US deportees, alongside sweeping policy changes that include punishing tariffs and travel bans. Yang's deportation to Laos – a country her parents were forced to flee following US military intervention – underscores the sweeping and aggressive tactics Trump's White House is using to expel immigrants. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed Yang's deportation in a statement to CNN. 'Under President Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem, if you break the law, you will face the consequences,' McLaughlin said. 'Criminal aliens are not welcome in the US.' Between 1964 and 1973, the US dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on Laos to destroy North Vietnamese supply lines that ran through the country, which is roughly the size of Oregon. The CIA recruited the Hmong to help them carry out their covert war against communist forces in Laos and Vietnam. The war decimated Laos and the Hmong. More cluster munitions were dropped on Laos during the Secret War than on Germany and Japan combined during World War II, making Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. An estimated 30,000 to 40,000 Hmong civilians and soldiers were killed – a tenth of the Hmong population in Laos. Following the US withdrawal, the Laos communist regime declared the Hmong enemies of the state. Roughly 150,000 fled to neighboring Thailand, and later the US, mainly settling in California, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Yang, her parents and her older siblings arrived in Milwaukee, sponsored by a church as part of a mass refugee resettlement program that brought more than one million people from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to the US in the decades after the war. Growing up, Yang was one of 13 siblings, and her parents worked from sunrise to sundown to provide for their children. 'Life in America was tough for us,' Yang said. 'We were really poor.' Yang had her first child at 14 and married an abusive man who struggled with drug addiction. Eventually, after another baby and a divorce, she settled into a calmer life with her long-term partner Michael Bub, and they went on to have three more children. Yang's life was not easy, and she worked hard to be present for her kids. Yang and Bub gave their kids a slice of American life, with trips to the McDonald's playground and shopping at Walmart. The family would frequently gather around her table for warm bowls of khao poon, a curried noodle soup from Laos – her kids' favorite. For years, Yang worked as a nail technician in a salon in Milwaukee, but it closed during the pandemic and money was tight. One of Yang's family members asked if she and Bub wanted to make a few extra bucks by helping to fill marijuana vape cartridges and allowing packages to be shipped to their house. 'That one decision made our lives change tremendously,' Yang said. Yang said she was given poor legal advice, and if she had known a guilty plea would threaten her immigration status, she would have fought the charges. Instead, Yang pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 100 kilograms or more of marijuana, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. Bub was also sentenced to two years in prison but is a US citizen. Yang and Bub were in the process of rebuilding their lives before she was deported. They had recently bought a house in a better neighborhood. 'We got out, and we said we wanted to do better for ourselves and for our children,' Yang said. 'I never in a million years thought this would happen.' Yang is now living more than 8,100 miles away from Milwaukee in the Laotian capital of Vientiane, and facing down her future in an unfamiliar place, separated from her five children and partner. 'For me to get ripped away from my children is the most shocking,' Yang said, adding that her children are struggling to cope with her sudden disappearance. 'I was there, and then I wasn't.' Over Memorial Day weekend in May, as Americans mourned veterans who died in combat, a flight carrying more than 150 people who were once displaced by US wars left on a one-way flight from Dallas, Texas. Since Trump returned to office in January, advocates say his administration has deported hundreds of people to Vietnam and Laos. ICE does not have up-to-date data on deportations to specific countries, so immigrant rights groups have stepped in to fill the void. Vo Danh, a collective of organizers which advocates on behalf of immigrants and refugees from Southeast Asia, reported 65 people were deported to Laos and 93 to Vietnam on the Memorial Day weekend flight. In the days leading up to the flight's departure, advocates had noticed dozens of immigrants from Southeast Asia being transferred from detention centers across the US to a facility in Dallas. Immigration advocate Tom Cartright, who tracks chartered ICE flights, noted that in May, Laos accepted its largest flight of US deportees since he started tracking in January 2020 – a flight which then carried on to Vietnam. A spokesperson for Vo Danh, which has been tracking deportations on a case-by-case basis through its network of family members, estimates almost 300 people have been deported to Vietnam and 80 have been deported to Laos in the few months since Trump returned to power. By comparison, between fiscal years 2021 and 2024, 145 people considered by ICE to be nationals of Vietnam and just six considered to be nationals of Laos were deported, according to ICE. The DHS, ICE and the White House did not answer questions from CNN about how many people have been deported to Laos and Vietnam since Trump returned to office. A consular officer at the Lao Embassy in Washington, DC, told the Minnesota Star Tribune in July it has issued travel documents for 145 people to be deported in 2025, compared to about 10 in a typical year. Advocates predict another wave of people will be deported soon. Last month, the Homeland Security Investigations field office in St. Paul – which boasts a large Hmong population – announced on X a slew of arrests of 'illegal aliens' from Laos. Many of the people deported from the US to Southeast Asia in recent months are former refugees who committed crimes, some decades ago, and pleaded guilty without realizing they were risking their right to remain in the US, said Connie Chung Joe, the CEO of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, the US's largest legal and civil rights organization for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. 'They came here as war-torn refugees, very poor, limited English proficiency, without any cultural ties, and then the community did not have safety net support,' Joe said. 'So, you saw a lot of trouble that came out, including the proliferation of things like gangs, young people getting into trouble, and they would end up with some sort of criminal background.' Because of the risks these refugees faced if they returned home, and the refusal of some Southeast Asian countries to accept deportees from the US, relatively few people with removal orders – legal directives ordering a non-US citizen to leave the country – were deported. Instead, after making their way through the US criminal justice system, many Southeast Asians were told to report to ICE for annual check-ins while they continued their life in the US. As of May, 4,749 people considered by ICE to be nationals of Laos had removal orders from the US, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), which tracks immigration court data. There were 10,745 Vietnamese nationals with removal orders, according to TRAC. 'The majority of individuals (who have been deported) are American in everything except for their green card,' said Quyen Dinh, Executive Director of the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center. 'They are spouses to US partners, they have US children, they are taking care of elders who also fled as refugees of war and genocide.' During his first term, Trump struck a new deal with Vietnam to accept immigrants who came to the US before 1995, including war refugees, superseding a 2008 agreement not to deport them. The US also introduced new visa sanctions on Laotian government officials to push the country to accept deportees. But Trump left office before these plans could materialize, and the Biden administration lifted the Laos visa sanctions. Since returning to office, Trump has increased pressure on countries to accept deportees from the US – even deportees who are not citizens of those countries. After a court challenge, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump could deport migrants to countries other than their homeland, including South Sudan and Libya, with minimal notice. Last month, the Trump administration introduced full and partial travel bans on citizens from 19 countries, including Laos, citing the country's visa overstay rate and historic refusal to 'accept back its removable nationals.' McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, said Yang was released from ICE custody in 2023 'because at the time ICE could not remove aliens to Laos due to the country's refusal to issue travel documents. Now, under President Trump's leadership, Laos is issuing travel documents and Yang was able to be returned.' However, because Yang was born in a refugee camp, she is not a citizen of Laos and is considered stateless – a precarious legal status whereby someone is not considered a national of any state. Yang currently has a temporary ID card in Laos and was told by authorities that she will be eligible for citizenship, but it could take one year or more. Bub, Yang's partner, has undergone several brain surgeries and receives disability payments from the government. He is now struggling to support five children as a single father. Before Yang was deported, the couple were also caring for Yang's mother, who had suffered two strokes. But Bub found it too difficult to care for her and five children, so she's had to find alternative care. The couple say the family is serving a second sentence for their crime. 'We paid for what we did,' Bub told CNN. When Yang was deported, he said 'I wanted to trade places with her if they'd let me.' Dinh, from the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, said the American government should be accountable for the fate of refugees from US wars. She and other advocacy groups are fighting to enshrine the status of Southeast Asian immigrants in the US and protect them against deportation. 'Our communities lost our entire homelands and livelihoods because of the destruction of our home countries, because of US decisions and US hands and US forces,' she said. 'When you accept a refugee, it is for the duration and the lifetime of the harm that you have done and have created.' Yang's family has created a GoFundMe to raise money to hire a lawyer to help reunite her with her kids in the US. 'I don't want to be forgotten,' Yang said. 'I want to fight to the very end for my case.' Each month she is away, she faces painful reminders of what she is missing out on. Last month, she missed her youngest daughter's graduation from kindergarten. Her eldest child, who was born when Yang was just 14, is taking the separation particularly hard. 'We raised each other,' Yang said. Yang's 12-year-old daughter recently told her she wanted to attend an anti-Trump rally to protest the immigration policies that had taken her mother away from her. 'This is not right,' Yang said. 'No kid should fear that this is what they have to do in order for their family to stay.'
CNN
6 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
A US war forced her parents to flee. Now, a Wisconsin mother has been deported back to the country she never called home
Ma Yang arrived at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in late February with a sinking feeling in her stomach. Several days earlier, she had received a call from ICE asking her to report to her local field office in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – more than six months before she was due for her annual check-in. President Donald Trump had been inaugurated for a second time and his administration had already moved ahead with its promise to deport millions of immigrants from the US. 'In my gut, I already knew something was off,' Yang told CNN. Yang, a 37-year-old mother of five, was detained that day and deported two weeks later to Laos – a small country in Southeast Asia that her parents had fled four decades earlier. Yang had never been to Laos, is not a Laos citizen and does not speak Lao. Born in a refugee camp in Thailand, Yang resettled in the US with her parents and older siblings when she was 8 months old. She is Hmong, an ethnic minority group in Southeast Asia who helped the CIA during its so-called Secret War which ran parallel to the Vietnam War. Many Hmong, including Yang's parents, fled Laos after the fall of Saigon. Yang lived for decades in the US legally as a permanent resident until she pleaded guilty to marijuana-related charges in 2022. Under US law, non-citizens can lose their visas if convicted of certain crimes. After serving her sentence, Yang was transferred to an ICE detention facility and released in 2023 with a removal order from the US. Yang said her lawyer at the time assured her the removal order would not be acted upon – deportations to Southeast Asia were exceedingly rare. But that appears to be changing. Months into Trump's second term, as his administration ramps up its immigration crackdown, hundreds of people have been quietly deported to Laos and Vietnam, immigrant rights advocates say, in a stark departure from decades of US immigration policy in the region. The reported uptick in deportations to Southeast Asia comes as the Trump administration ramps up pressure on countries, including some with poor human rights records, to accept US deportees, alongside sweeping policy changes that include punishing tariffs and travel bans. Yang's deportation to Laos – a country her parents were forced to flee following US military intervention – underscores the sweeping and aggressive tactics Trump's White House is using to expel immigrants. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed Yang's deportation in a statement to CNN. 'Under President Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem, if you break the law, you will face the consequences,' McLaughlin said. 'Criminal aliens are not welcome in the US.' Between 1964 and 1973, the US dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on Laos to destroy North Vietnamese supply lines that ran through the country, which is roughly the size of Oregon. The CIA recruited the Hmong to help them carry out their covert war against communist forces in Laos and Vietnam. The war decimated Laos and the Hmong. More cluster munitions were dropped on Laos during the Secret War than on Germany and Japan combined during World War II, making Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. An estimated 30,000 to 40,000 Hmong civilians and soldiers were killed – a tenth of the Hmong population in Laos. Following the US withdrawal, the Laos communist regime declared the Hmong enemies of the state. Roughly 150,000 fled to neighboring Thailand, and later the US, mainly settling in California, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Yang, her parents and her older siblings arrived in Milwaukee, sponsored by a church as part of a mass refugee resettlement program that brought more than one million people from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to the US in the decades after the war. Growing up, Yang was one of 13 siblings, and her parents worked from sunrise to sundown to provide for their children. 'Life in America was tough for us,' Yang said. 'We were really poor.' Yang had her first child at 14 and married an abusive man who struggled with drug addiction. Eventually, after another baby and a divorce, she settled into a calmer life with her long-term partner Michael Bub, and they went on to have three more children. Yang's life was not easy, and she worked hard to be present for her kids. Yang and Bub gave their kids a slice of American life, with trips to the McDonald's playground and shopping at Walmart. The family would frequently gather around her table for warm bowls of khao poon, a curried noodle soup from Laos – her kids' favorite. For years, Yang worked as a nail technician in a salon in Milwaukee, but it closed during the pandemic and money was tight. One of Yang's family members asked if she and Bub wanted to make a few extra bucks by helping to fill marijuana vape cartridges and allowing packages to be shipped to their house. 'That one decision made our lives change tremendously,' Yang said. Yang said she was given poor legal advice, and if she had known a guilty plea would threaten her immigration status, she would have fought the charges. Instead, Yang pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 100 kilograms or more of marijuana, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. Bub was also sentenced to two years in prison but is a US citizen. Yang and Bub were in the process of rebuilding their lives before she was deported. They had recently bought a house in a better neighborhood. 'We got out, and we said we wanted to do better for ourselves and for our children,' Yang said. 'I never in a million years thought this would happen.' Yang is now living more than 8,100 miles away from Milwaukee in the Laotian capital of Vientiane, and facing down her future in an unfamiliar place, separated from her five children and partner. 'For me to get ripped away from my children is the most shocking,' Yang said, adding that her children are struggling to cope with her sudden disappearance. 'I was there, and then I wasn't.' Over Memorial Day weekend in May, as Americans mourned veterans who died in combat, a flight carrying more than 150 people who were once displaced by US wars left on a one-way flight from Dallas, Texas. Since Trump returned to office in January, advocates say his administration has deported hundreds of people to Vietnam and Laos. ICE does not have up-to-date data on deportations to specific countries, so immigrant rights groups have stepped in to fill the void. Vo Danh, a collective of organizers which advocates on behalf of immigrants and refugees from Southeast Asia, reported 65 people were deported to Laos and 93 to Vietnam on the Memorial Day weekend flight. In the days leading up to the flight's departure, advocates had noticed dozens of immigrants from Southeast Asia being transferred from detention centers across the US to a facility in Dallas. Immigration advocate Tom Cartright, who tracks chartered ICE flights, noted that in May, Laos accepted its largest flight of US deportees since he started tracking in January 2020 – a flight which then carried on to Vietnam. A spokesperson for Vo Danh, which has been tracking deportations on a case-by-case basis through its network of family members, estimates almost 300 people have been deported to Vietnam and 80 have been deported to Laos in the few months since Trump returned to power. By comparison, between fiscal years 2021 and 2024, 145 people considered by ICE to be nationals of Vietnam and just six considered to be nationals of Laos were deported, according to ICE. The DHS, ICE and the White House did not answer questions from CNN about how many people have been deported to Laos and Vietnam since Trump returned to office. A consular officer at the Lao Embassy in Washington, DC, told the Minnesota Star Tribune in July it has issued travel documents for 145 people to be deported in 2025, compared to about 10 in a typical year. Advocates predict another wave of people will be deported soon. Last month, the Homeland Security Investigations field office in St. Paul – which boasts a large Hmong population – announced on X a slew of arrests of 'illegal aliens' from Laos. Many of the people deported from the US to Southeast Asia in recent months are former refugees who committed crimes, some decades ago, and pleaded guilty without realizing they were risking their right to remain in the US, said Connie Chung Joe, the CEO of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, the US's largest legal and civil rights organization for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. 'They came here as war-torn refugees, very poor, limited English proficiency, without any cultural ties, and then the community did not have safety net support,' Joe said. 'So, you saw a lot of trouble that came out, including the proliferation of things like gangs, young people getting into trouble, and they would end up with some sort of criminal background.' Because of the risks these refugees faced if they returned home, and the refusal of some Southeast Asian countries to accept deportees from the US, relatively few people with removal orders – legal directives ordering a non-US citizen to leave the country – were deported. Instead, after making their way through the US criminal justice system, many Southeast Asians were told to report to ICE for annual check-ins while they continued their life in the US. As of May, 4,749 people considered by ICE to be nationals of Laos had removal orders from the US, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), which tracks immigration court data. There were 10,745 Vietnamese nationals with removal orders, according to TRAC. 'The majority of individuals (who have been deported) are American in everything except for their green card,' said Quyen Dinh, Executive Director of the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center. 'They are spouses to US partners, they have US children, they are taking care of elders who also fled as refugees of war and genocide.' During his first term, Trump struck a new deal with Vietnam to accept immigrants who came to the US before 1995, including war refugees, superseding a 2008 agreement not to deport them. The US also introduced new visa sanctions on Laotian government officials to push the country to accept deportees. But Trump left office before these plans could materialize, and the Biden administration lifted the Laos visa sanctions. Since returning to office, Trump has increased pressure on countries to accept deportees from the US – even deportees who are not citizens of those countries. After a court challenge, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump could deport migrants to countries other than their homeland, including South Sudan and Libya, with minimal notice. Last month, the Trump administration introduced full and partial travel bans on citizens from 19 countries, including Laos, citing the country's visa overstay rate and historic refusal to 'accept back its removable nationals.' McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, said Yang was released from ICE custody in 2023 'because at the time ICE could not remove aliens to Laos due to the country's refusal to issue travel documents. Now, under President Trump's leadership, Laos is issuing travel documents and Yang was able to be returned.' However, because Yang was born in a refugee camp, she is not a citizen of Laos and is considered stateless – a precarious legal status whereby someone is not considered a national of any state. Yang currently has a temporary ID card in Laos and was told by authorities that she will be eligible for citizenship, but it could take one year or more. Bub, Yang's partner, has undergone several brain surgeries and receives disability payments from the government. He is now struggling to support five children as a single father. Before Yang was deported, the couple were also caring for Yang's mother, who had suffered two strokes. But Bub found it too difficult to care for her and five children, so she's had to find alternative care. The couple say the family is serving a second sentence for their crime. 'We paid for what we did,' Bub told CNN. When Yang was deported, he said 'I wanted to trade places with her if they'd let me.' Dinh, from the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, said the American government should be accountable for the fate of refugees from US wars. She and other advocacy groups are fighting to enshrine the status of Southeast Asian immigrants in the US and protect them against deportation. 'Our communities lost our entire homelands and livelihoods because of the destruction of our home countries, because of US decisions and US hands and US forces,' she said. 'When you accept a refugee, it is for the duration and the lifetime of the harm that you have done and have created.' Yang's family has created a GoFundMe to raise money to hire a lawyer to help reunite her with her kids in the US. 'I don't want to be forgotten,' Yang said. 'I want to fight to the very end for my case.' Each month she is away, she faces painful reminders of what she is missing out on. Last month, she missed her youngest daughter's graduation from kindergarten. Her eldest child, who was born when Yang was just 14, is taking the separation particularly hard. 'We raised each other,' Yang said. Yang's 12-year-old daughter recently told her she wanted to attend an anti-Trump rally to protest the immigration policies that had taken her mother away from her. 'This is not right,' Yang said. 'No kid should fear that this is what they have to do in order for their family to stay.'
Mint
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Mint
The Vietnam war made American culture bolder and more varied
The images of the fall of Saigon, on April 30th 1975, are indelible. A helicopter takes off from the roof of an apartment building, leaving behind a long line of would-be evacuees. Victorious North Vietnamese soldiers roll into the city in tanks, on their way to sack the United States embassy and raise their flag over the presidential palace. Vietnamese civilians rush onto packed boats in terror. America's involvement in Vietnam began with realpolitik and ended in shame. It started covertly in 1954, soon after the Viet Minh, a nationalist, communist guerrilla group, terminated French colonial rule and Vietnam was cleaved in two. It grew into a war that killed almost 60,000 American soldiers and over 3m Vietnamese civilians and soldiers. America's performance in the two world wars allowed the country to think of itself as benevolent and invincible. Vietnam put that myth to rest. The war haunted American politics for decades, but 50 years on, and with veterans' average age now 72, its salience is fading. H.W. Brands, a historian at the University of Texas, says, 'To my students, the Vietnam war might as well be the civil war." But his students still live in a culture dramatically changed by that war. It permanently altered American film, music, television and—most importantly—Americans' relationship to their government. Read what The Economist thought about the fall of Saigon in 1975 In 1954 America was at peak self-confidence. The second world war wreaked devastation, but America had emerged as a geopolitical and industrial power. The ructions of the 1960s were still a decade ahead; the Depression's privations were 15 years in the past. Polls taken in 1958 showed that 73% of Americans trusted their government to do the right thing. So when President Dwight Eisenhower sent Edward Lansdale, an air-force officer, to help the government of South Vietnam in its struggle against the communist north, it raised little public outcry. Few Americans could even find Vietnam on a map. Many were introduced to it by a popular book called 'Deliver Us From Evil" (1956). The author, Tom Dooley, an American naval medic who worked in Vietnam, described a grisly roster of horrors visited on innocent Vietnamese Christians. He cast American capitalism and compassion as the only things that could save millions of Vietnamese from communist brutality. (After Dooley's early death from cancer in 1961, it emerged that he had worked with the CIA and fabricated his stories of communist atrocities.) Dooley's sensationalised narrative suited Americans' self-image as benign, conquering heroes. Popular Westerns such as 'Shane" (1953) and 'The Magnificent Seven" (1960) depicted Americans as civilising folk who stood up for the downtrodden. Epic films such as 'Spartacus" (1960) depicted combat as noble and righteous, with clear battle lines and starkly defined good guys and baddies. Meanwhile, America's involvement in Vietnam was deepening. In 1960 America had 700 military 'advisers" helping the pro-Western government of South Vietnam; by the end of 1964, that number had grown to 23,000. It was still too little. And so America began drafting young men to go to Vietnam. The horror, the horror Two things were notable about America's military strategy. First, it was not working. In early 1965 McGeorge Bundy, the national security adviser, told President Lyndon Johnson that America could either negotiate a settlement between North and South Vietnam, or increase military pressure on the north. And second, it was largely kept from the public. Soon after Bundy's memo, Johnson secretly authorised systematic bombings of the north and sent two Marine battalions to guard the bases from which American planes took off. The first glimmers of public discontent emerged in American music. In 1963 Bob Dylan condemned the 'Masters of War" who 'hide in your mansion while the young people's blood/Flows out of their bodies and is buried in the mud". Nina Simone complained in 1967 about a government that would 'raise my taxes, freeze my wages/And send my son to Vietnam". In the 1960s protest songs were rarely mainstream hits, but David Suisman, a music historian at the University of Delaware, notes that this was the start of what came to be known as 'alternative music": styles with strong niche appeal and even stronger political messages. Genres such as folk stood apart from—and often in opposition to—mainstream music, which at the time was dominated by anodyne love songs. Hip-hop and punk were the inheritors of that legacy. The brutal images Americans saw on their televisions every night fuelled such discontent. Unlike the feel-good newsreels broadcast in the second world war, coverage of Vietnam was not sanitised. New technology, in particular lightweight cameras and sound equipment, enabled journalists to go into the field and show people what was happening. This permanently changed the media's wartime role; the public now expects to see combat footage and sceptical reporters. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the army let journalists 'embed" themselves with combat units. It took longer for the war to arrive in cinemas, but when it did, film-makers were unsparing in their depictions. 'The Deer Hunter" (1978) showed the war's effects on three friends from an insular steel town in Pennsylvania. Francis Ford Coppola's magnificent 'Apocalypse Now" (1979) portrayed the corrosive insanity of the war's senseless violence and the lies upon which it rested. And in Stanley Kubrick's 'Full Metal Jacket" (1987), the war was nothing more than a charnel house. Ever since, American films have largely eschewed the tidy morality and view of combat that defined pre-Vietnam war movies. Even the last 'good war"—the second world war—had its shine removed in 'Saving Private Ryan" (1998): the combat scenes were shockingly violent and confusing. 'Jarhead" (2005) and 'Warfare" (2025), about the fighting with Iraq, depict war as dreary and fundamentally pointless. 'American Sniper" (2014) told the true story of a veteran who fought in Iraq and was murdered by another officer with PTSD; it showed how war hangs over soldiers long after they return home. Many of these changes were welcome. Combat is brutal and war is rarely a Manichean struggle between heroes and villains. Films that reflect such complexity are richer than those that ignore it. Protest songs can be trite, but American music is better today than it was in the 1950s for having multiple genres and voices. And a sceptical press serves its watchdog purpose better than a pliant, credulous one. Underlying all of these cultural changes has been a profound social one. In 1971 the Pentagon Papers, high-level government reports on the war, were leaked, revealing the depth of officials' dishonesty about their motives and efficacy in Vietnam. A poll taken that year showed that 71% of Americans believed the war had been a 'mistake". By 1974 barely more than one-third of Americans trusted their government to do the right thing. Aside from a brief post-9/11 spike, America's government has never regained the trust of a majority of its citizens. Today only 22% trust it, and it seems unlikely to win back Americans' confidence soon. Correction (April 28th 2025): In an earlier version of this article, we misidentified the building from which a helicopter carrying evacuees took off. It was an apartment building, not the American Embassy. This has been updated. Sorry. 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Wales Online
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Wales Online
Tributes paid as journalist and TV presenter Sandy Gall dies aged 97
Tributes paid as journalist and TV presenter Sandy Gall dies aged 97 His journalism career spanned more than 50 years and he was a renowned foreign correspondent for ITN and the face of ITV's News At Ten from 1963 until 1992. Sandy Gall reported from Vietnam and Afghanistan (Image: PA Archive/PA Images ) Journalist Sandy Gall has been praised as a "giant and a gentleman" after his death at the age of 97. His journalism career spanned more than 50 years and he was a renowned foreign correspondent for ITN and the face of ITV's News At Ten from 1963 until 1992. His family revealed that he died at his home in Kent on Sunday, and said: "His was a great life, generously and courageously lived." Gall covered major events such as the assassination of US president John F Kennedy, the civil rights movement and the Lockerbie disaster, after entering journalism as a reporter for the Aberdeen Press and Journal in 1952. Tom Bradby, lead anchor of News At Ten, said: "He had, as a foreign correspondent, been there and done everything. "As a trainee walking through the doors of ITN 35 years ago, I was one of many young would-be reporters he inspired. Article continues below "His old-world charm and on-screen presence endeared him to so many viewers and so many of us. "He was a giant and a gentleman of our business. Everyone loved Sandy." Sir Trevor McDonald, former News At Ten presenter, said: "I think Sandy Gall was one of the most brilliant journalists out there. "And, around his work, ITN was able to build an enormous reputation. "He travelled the world, he covered wars, he covered political upheavals, and what he said, people believed. "He gave ITN and News At Ten its credibility. When Sandy Gall said something, everyone believed it." During his time as a foreign correspondent, Gall covered the arrival of the US into the Vietnam War in 1965, and the end of the conflict when the North Vietnamese army entered Saigon in 1975. Despite becoming a news presenter in 1970, he continued to report first-hand, spending weeks travelling on horseback to follow the Mujahideen in their guerilla war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. After his retirement in 1992, he founded and became chairman of Sandy Gall's Afghanistan Appeal, a charity for disabled Afghans that helped war-related casualties, as well as children in refugee camps, for nearly 40 years. He was made a CBE in 1987 and Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in 2011. Tom Tugendhat MP said: "Quite simply, a hero. "Sandy Gall told the stories we needed to hear and kept up with those whose lives he had brought to our notice. Article continues below "My condolences go to Carlotta Gall and the whole family. He was a legend to many, and a father to a lucky few."
