A Milwaukee mother of five with a conviction of drug trafficking has been deported to a country where she never lived and blamed her lawyer.
Ma Yang, 37, was deported to Laos last month – despite the fact that he had not spoken to the Lao language and had no friends or family in the country, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The army is now holding on to her papers and Yang has been left without insulin because of its diabetes and a decreasing stock of high blood pressure medication, she said.
“The United States sent me back to die,” she claimed. “I don't even know where to go. I don't even know what to do. '
Yang was born in a refugee camp in Thailand, the daughter of HMONG refugees after the Vietnam War, TMJ 4 reports. They then brought her to the United States when she was only eight months old.
But Yang decided to participate in a drug trafficking during a green card, which can be withdrawn for criminal behavior.
She made a plea that saw her trapped and now claims that the lawyer who closed the deal in front of her told her that this would not endanger her immigration status.
She believed that she could stay in the country because Laos usually refused to accept American deportees, with records showing that zero people were deported to the country in the last tax year.
But to her surprise, Yang was sent on a series of commercial flights from Chicago to Atlanta to South Korea and finally to Laos last year.
Ma Yang, 37, was deported to Laos last month – even though he had not spoken to the Lao language and had no friends or family in the country
She left her five children, whose ages vary from 22 to six years old
When she arrived in the Laotian capital of Vientiane on 6 March on March 6, Yang said that she was interrogated by military authorities – was then sent to a room house, where guards did not allow her to leave for five days or contact someone.
She spent her days walking around in circles, while the guards refused to let her leave for five days or to contact someone.
Then, recently, Yang was left to withdraw cash and buy a mobile phone – so that she could finally reach her partner of 16 years old, Michael Bub, an American citizen.
At that moment she was told that she could leave if she wanted – but still, she says, she doesn't know where she would go.
“How do I rent, or buy, or something without papers?” she asked. “I'm nobody now.”
Yang is now struggling to get answers from Laos military officials about her living situation and what she should do now.
In the meantime, Bub – who has had two brain operations and is partially paralyzed – trouble taking care of their children as a single father.
He did not sleep and notes that the last time he saw Yang was when he hurried essentials and money for her flight.
The family has been left for answers from the Laos army
“I think I shouted in the car for half an hour,” he said.
Their oldest daughter, Asia, at the age of 22, is also forced to step in to take care of her brothers and sisters – the youngest is six.
The problems started shortly after the family moved to a house that, according to public prosecutors, was part of a marijuana trade.
Public Prosecutors have claimed that Yang helped to count and pack cash that was emailed to suppliers of Marijuana in California, and said they found bags of cash that had been recorded between pages with magazines.
Yang eventually took a plea and served two and a half years in prison and claimed that her lawyer wrongly told her that the plea would not affect her immigration status as a green card holder.
But her legal permanent residence permit was withdrawn.
After her punishment, Yang was transferred to an ice detention center in Minnesota, where she signed a document on the advice of a lawyer that agreed that a deportation warrant would be published against her in exchange for release from detention.
At that time, Yang said she expected her second lawyer to reopen her criminal case and get the conviction that she had a bad legal representation for the first time.
If it were to be thrown away, she reasoned, the deportation warrant would become irrelevant.
But the lawyer never fought against the indictment.
“I'm just being sewn into this system,” she said.
Her old partner, Michael Bub – who has had two brain operations and is partially paralyzed – has difficulty taking care of their children as a single father
In mid-February Yang said she received a phone call from Ice and asked her to go to their office in the center of Milwaukee for a check-in.
That was when she was held and sent to Indiana, Yang said.
Yet someone told her that she would probably just be in prison for a few months and then would be released, because Laos would probably not take her back.
But after just two weeks she was sent to an auxiliary patch in Chicago and then to the airport, where an officer forced her to put her fingerprints on a document stating that she would not return to the US.
Now Yang says that she feels betrayed by the US – and notes that Hmong soldiers who were recruited by the CIA helped the US Army in the war in Vietnam and then confronted with persecution and violence for their role.
“How did you send us back when we fought for you?” she asked rhetorically. “How is that okay?”
