Milwaukee mother deported to Laos, a country she has never been to

Yang was born in Thailand and was a legal permanent US resident until she pleaded guilty to marijuana-related charges and served more than 2 years in prison.
Unfuckingbelievable. 2 years in prison for weed, what are we even doing here.
- Imagine if she'd have pleaded not guilty...
  
  Believe it or not, straight to jail
- The history of the War on Some Drugs has been terrible. People like Leary who had a 10 year sentence for....possession of two roaches. And that was a relatively wealthy white guy...
- Possession of any amount for a first-time offense is a misdemeanor punishable by 6 months imprisonment and up to $1,000 in fines
  Possession of any amount of marijuana (subsequent offense) is a felony punishable by 3.5 years imprisonment and up to $10,000 in fines
  The cultivation of 4 plants or fewer cannabis plants is a felony punishable by 3.5 years imprisonment and up to $10,000 in fines
  The cultivation of between 4 and 20 cannabis plants is a felony punishable by 6 years imprisonment and up to $10,000 in fines
  Some of the most punitive laws I've seen.
  
  Would've already been jailed multiple times if I was American. Think I've been told to put it away at least 10 times here in NL
- Republican child diddlers get less
- she also overstayed her VISA too.
- https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/milwaukee/2025/03/14/south-milwaukee-woman-deported-to-laos-is-stranded-with-few-options/82369691007/
  That story has a bit more info about the marijuana related charges. Not a ton, but it does have:
  "A longtime Milwaukee resident, Yang worked as a nail technician and a receptionist at nail salons before the COVID-19 pandemic. She was earning a living for her children, who range in age from 6 to 22. Her partner, Bub, is disabled: he has had two brain surgeries, is partially paralyzed and suffers from memory loss.
  During the pandemic, the family moved into a house that prosecutors say was part of a marijuana trafficking operation.
  Yang was among 26 people indicted in a sweeping federal case in 2020. It alleged Yang helped count and package cash that was mailed to marijuana suppliers in California. Prosecutors found bags of cash taped between pages of magazines, according to a complaint."
  So it was a trafficking case. Weed was being shipped from Cali, where it's legal, to Wisconsin, where it's not, and they were mailing back cash to pay for the weed. To me it just sounds like she was trying to take care of her family and disabled partner during a difficult time.
  Also, "Marijuana-related charges" is never going to mean "beating someone half dead because they smoked your weed." That's just battery. Even guessing that that is code for some violent crime makes you sound like a right wing nutjob making huge mental leaps to justify how horribly this woman was treated by the govt as a good thing.
  
  Better article with more detail.
  During the pandemic, the family moved into a house that prosecutors say was part of a marijuana trafficking operation.
  Yang was among 26 people indicted in a sweeping federal case in 2020. It alleged Yang helped count and package cash that was mailed to marijuana suppliers in California. Prosecutors found bags of cash taped between pages of magazines, according to a complaint.
  She took a plea deal and served 2 1/2 years in prison. She said her attorney incorrectly told her the plea deal would not affect her immigration status as a green card holder. But her legal permanent residency was revoked.
  At the end of her sentence, Yang was transferred to an ICE detention facility in Minnesota. There, at the advice of another attorney, she signed a document agreeing that a deportation order would be entered against her in exchange for being released from detention.
  Despite agreeing to be deported, she and her attorney believed it wouldn't happen, since only a small handful of people are deported to Laos each year
  Sounds like she got involved with something she shouldn't have as a green card holder, and then took some crap legal advice that didn't account for an aggressive change in administration/policy.
  
  Their journalism beats your baseless allusions of violence by every conceivable metric.

Anyone wondering why they are so needlessly cruel - that's the point. It's a demonstration of malign power for both the oppressed and the oppressors so that each knows their place.
- Same reason as the Nazi regime and the Jews. They need somebody to hate and destroy because of their fragile ego. It is easier to believe in something than it is to question something.
- One of my friends was complaining that Biden's border policy is a disaster and I told her that it's actually very easy to "fix" the border, it's just incompatible with stated US values:
  Ritual torture.
  Now they have to expand the target population because Biden's deportation numbers were better.
- https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/
- Uh she was involved in a drug trafficking operation. She is not some innocent person. Being a PR this was very stupid on her part.
  
  It was weed, as a side job. She's a victim of the right's incessant need to make people suffer.
  
  Give people welfare and they won't do stupid stuff like this.

Oh, she's also diabetic and running out of insulin & heart medication. And the Lao government is holding her things so she has no money or identification or anything. Neat.
- Hopefully Laos deports her back to the US.
  
  Where she won't be able to afford the medications anyway!
  
  Just randomly deport people to a country. What are they trump.

Canada Europe, Australia and other free democracies need to be offering this woman (and her family) and people like her refugee status. She is clearly being discriminated against and needlessly and cruelly punished.
- Many thousands of refugees fleeing persecution are facing discrimination and cruelty too, and have been for years.
  Free democracies in wealthy nations need to step up better to look after ALL refugees.
- It's never left me remembering how much hate i saw Kossovo refugees getting in the UK in the 90s. People fleeing a massacre, mass graves, land mines, blitzkrieg, rape as a weapon of war - only to be treated like scum by the average Joe.
- Pretty sure they would get a lot of skilled worker knowledge if they did so
- Refugee wouldn’t apply here but they could still help/take her in
  
  What a pedantic thing to focus on

Maybe I miss something, but why Laos of all places? I didn't get what connects her to that particular counrty, could it be her ethnicity as a person who was actually born in another country? Why not Tai? Like, I miss a lot of questions to ask before that, why she's even deported in the first place, but the seemingly random choice of the country is what surprised me and the article's writer the most.
- Easy answer:
  
  Doesn't really work with a lot of Asian people. Needs an additional eye diagram.
- Maybe I miss something, but why Laos of all places?
  Seems like Trump just randomly picked a nation that Hmong live in.
  The modern Hmong reside mainly in Southwestern China and Mainland Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hmong_people
  
  Weren't those the people from that one Clint Eastwood film a few years ago?
- Racism.
- Because he wasn't sure if she is Chinese or Japanese
  
  Hank Hill's Dad would have known where she is from.
- I’m far from an expert and only know what I know from a short story.
  But the Hmong people are from Laos but many of them fled to Thailand as refugees I think it was from some military action.
  I’m not sure, but it might have been the US military. I read somewhere that Laos had the most bombs dropped on it or something.
  Again, this info could be off, so please double check if you want to learn more, but this might get you started.
  
  IIRC, the CIA convinced the Hmong to fight for them against the communists in southeast Asia, and promised to take care of them if it all went south. Well, we all know how the Vietnam war went, and while a government that was very unhappy with the Hmong for siding with the CIA was taking over, the CIA basically threw deuces and vanished on them. So shocking and uncharacteristic of the US to betray an ally, I know. So, the Hmong fled to Thailand and begged the US for aid. I'm sure we'll get the duality of tankie responses (nobody was treating them badly but if they were they deserved it), but the gist is that they were seeking refuge. A few years later, the US granted it. Now, bear in mind, originally they'd been told they were going to be able to have their own farms and fuck off to nowhere and mind their own business. Uncle Sam basically dumped them in Merced, California, patted himself on the back, and walked away. There was a lot of drama about it for a while, because the locals got real upset that this entire population just showed up basically overnight and seemed to resist integration, and the Hmong were upset because they just wanted to fuck off and mind their own farms. Fifty years later, though, the Hmong are a pretty big deal (in a good way) in the community, so that's cool.
  
  America secretly carpet bombed Laos when Laos wasn't even at war.
  They dropped 2 MILLION tons of bombs onto it and somehow kept it a secret from the American people for multiple years. One of Henry Kissingers ideas.
- Asian kind of eyes? Laos is an Asian city? There you go, send her to Laos, it's all the same
  (Severe /s if that wasn't clear)
  
  You’re being sarcastic, but I bet this is the logic. Terrifying watching what is happening in the USA at the minute.
- Trump thinks Asians are lousy, so they must all come from Laos.
- More than likely her parents were from Laos. Despite being born in Thailand, she is probably considered a Laotian citizen. It's very unlikely they would have accepted her back otherwise.

TIL the nazi president and his rubberstamp king invoked The Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which I also just learned "is intended to be invoked when the country is at war or if a foreign nation has invaded the U.S. or has issued threats that they will."
[edit bc the internet does not need more allcaps]
- The country is at war, Nazis have invaded the white house.
  
  War implies actual resistance, not just online complaints.
  
  Let's get all the first through third generation German Americans into Freedom camps just to be safe. Maybe have a few in Death Valley for the natives that don't appreciate their Land gifts in Oklahoma that are selfishly hogging mineral rich lands. /S
  
  Oh brother....
- Might just be part of the whole "flooding the zone" strategy. It might get undone due to exactly what you bolded.
- conservatives get doxxed. do you want to get doxxed?

Welp, it worked we got em. The nation is now safe from this Midwestern mom who smoked pot once. Good job everyone

Just speechless really.
- Why? What's surprising about Nazis doing Nazi things?
  
  Right? What part of "mass deportations" do we not understand when voting for Krasnov?

Here's a better article: https://eu.jsonline.com/story/news/local/milwaukee/2025/03/14/south-milwaukee-woman-deported-to-laos-is-stranded-with-few-options/82369691007/

I'm scanning the article for the part where she or members of her family voted for trump
- Since it isn't mentioned, they probably didn't.

Where did Wisconsin’s electoral college votes go to? I’m guessing they wanted this.
- Wisconsin is one of the swingiest swing states. Wisconsin's electoral votes went to Trump, Biden and Trump in the last 3 presidential elections by extremely narrow margins (just a percent or two each time) and they've had governors races decided by hundreds of votes in recent years. Every election in Wisconsin is hard to predict other than the hyper-local ones, especially after the court-ordered redistricting away from the Republican-drawn super-gerrymandered districts
  Electoral votes do not represent a state's population

- She wasn't illegal until her lawyer told her to take a plea deal that wouldn't effect her legal status in the U.S. Then it did change her status. Serving 2 years for smoking pot and then being abducted and throw out of the country is ridiculous. She hurt no one, paid taxes and didn't do anything wrong in the majority of the U.S.'s opinion. If it were actually a functional Republic, she would have broken no laws in the first place.
  
  She didn’t smoke pot. She was part of a criminal syndicate that mailed money to marijuana suppliers. It was trafficking, which is illegal in every country.

- She had been associated with a weed dealer. She moved to a house with a weed dealer neighbour, who gave her work in handling incoming cash. So, she was a part of a weed-dealing group, but apparently was not aware that it deals weed.
  
  Thanks, my original comment was deleted by the mod. She was in on it and I don't have much sympathy for her plight.