On a humid Thursday morning in early August, the steps of the Michigan Capitol took on a somber, urgent tone as Democratic State Rep. Mai Xiong, flanked by fellow lawmakers and community advocates, called for the release of 15 Hmong immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) just days earlier in Detroit. For Xiong, herself a Hmong American who arrived in the U.S. as a child refugee, the fight is deeply personal—these are not just constituents, but echoes of her own family’s journey and struggle for belonging in America.
The July 30 ICE roundup in Detroit left families reeling, as longtime residents—many who had lived in the U.S. for decades—were suddenly swept into detention, facing imminent deportation. According to reporting from Michigan Advance, the group includes individuals who, despite their roots in Michigan, are now threatened with removal to Laos—a country that, crucially, does not recognize them as citizens and has refused to accept deported Hmong people from the United States. This legal limbo renders the detainees effectively stateless, amplifying both the practical and human stakes of their predicament.
“Instead of our federal leaders focusing on policy changes to reform the immigration system, they are throwing billions of dollars into hiring more ICE officers while providing sign-on bonuses to snatch people,” Xiong said at the press conference. “We are going to see more detainments, more deportations. If you are not upset, you should be.” Her words, as reported by Michigan Advance, cut through the procedural language that often shrouds immigration debates, laying bare the emotional and communal cost of current enforcement strategies.
Among those detained is Lue Yang, a 47-year-old resident of St. Johns and a respected community leader. Yang, who came to the U.S. as an asylum seeker in the late 1970s, was taken into custody after a voluntary check-in with immigration officials on July 15. Now held at the North Lake ICE facility in Baldwin, Yang’s case is emblematic of the broader issues plaguing the immigration system. Years ago, he pleaded guilty to being an accessory to a home invasion—a decision made with little legal guidance or understanding of its future immigration consequences. Despite turning his life around and becoming a pillar of his community, that old conviction now bars him from securing a green card through his wife, Ancy Vue, and has landed him in ICE detention.
Vue, speaking alongside Xiong, painted a vivid picture of the toll this ordeal has taken. “Please help me and our families in the many that are suffering, there are many that have not heard from their loved ones since detainment and being transferred. This is our home,” she pleaded. “These are our children. This is my husband, and this is our fight. Let him come home, let our families be whole again, and let America keep its promise.”
The ICE detentions have sparked a wave of advocacy and protest. A rally was planned for Friday, August 8, in support of the detained Hmong Michiganders, signaling growing public resistance to what many see as an unjust and inhumane approach to immigration enforcement. According to Michigan Advance, several of the detainees were first processed in Baldwin, then transferred to Texas and Louisiana—moves that advocates say are designed to obscure their whereabouts and make legal intervention more difficult. The Trump administration’s travel ban on Laos has only complicated matters, raising questions about where, if anywhere, these individuals could be sent.
“Most of these individuals have never been to Laos or were not born there,” Xiong explained. “Their parents fled Laos because of war and persecution.” The lack of a formal repatriation agreement between the U.S. and Laos means that, even if deported, these Hmong immigrants have nowhere to go—a bureaucratic Catch-22 with life-altering consequences.
Beyond Michigan, the issue of ICE detention practices has come under intense national scrutiny. On August 6, Senator Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) released a damning report documenting 510 credible reports of human rights abuses in immigration detention centers across the country. As detailed by Nexstar Media, the findings included 41 reports of physical and sexual abuse, 14 of mistreatment of pregnant women, and 18 of mistreatment of children. The report paints a grim picture: pregnant women denied medical attention, with one reportedly left to miscarry alone for over 24 hours; detainees slammed to the ground or held in overcrowded rooms without adequate food, water, or sanitation; and officers responding to protests with flash-bang grenades and rubber bullets.
The Ossoff report also highlights multiple instances of sexual abuse, including emergency 911 calls from ICE facilities in California and South Texas. Even children—some U.S. citizens, others with serious medical conditions such as cancer—were not spared, often detained alongside their parents in conditions that advocates decry as cruel and inhumane. The Department of Homeland Security, for its part, has not responded to requests for comment on these findings.
Back in Michigan, advocates and attorneys are challenging the legality of the warrants and arrests used in the recent ICE detentions. Aisa Villarosa, an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, criticized the administration’s tactics: “None of us are safe when families are ripped apart. We call on state and local officials to stand firmly for due process. Now is the time for our leaders to do everything they can to protect us, including our immigrant and refugee neighbors.”
For many in the Hmong community and beyond, the current wave of ICE enforcement feels like a betrayal of America’s promises to those who risked everything to support U.S. efforts abroad during the Vietnam War and later sought refuge from conflict and persecution. The Hmong, recruited by the CIA for the so-called “secret war” in Laos, have long been recognized for their contributions and sacrifices. Yet today, their descendants find themselves vulnerable to policies that threaten to uproot and divide families, often with little regard for their unique circumstances or the absence of any viable country of return.
Xiong put it plainly: “Refugees living in Michigan do not have a safe country to return to. Michigan is their home. This is where their families and communities and workplaces are. I hope that my constituents will understand that tearing families apart, removing taxpayers and workers from our communities, placing them in private for-profit detention centers funded by our public dollars, and deporting them when they have been longtime residents of our state is not good economic policy.”
With rallies planned, legal challenges mounting, and stories like Yang’s and Vue’s circulating widely, the debate over immigration enforcement in Michigan and nationally shows no sign of abating. The outcome for the 15 detained Hmong immigrants—and for countless others caught in the system—remains uncertain, but the calls for reform and humanity are growing ever louder.