Chia Neng Vue was napping after a night shift when his 5-year-old son saw officers in armored vests outside the window of the family’s Coon Rapids home.
“Hey buddy,” said one of the officers, when Leon opened the door. “Is your dad home?”
It was a week after Vue’s most recent check-in with the Federal Immigration Court at Fort Snelling. At the time, court officers had told him to check back with them in six months, a temporary reprieve in a climate of escalating immigration enforcement.
But when he came to the door, officers from Homeland Security Investigations waved him out to the driveway.
“They just pulled me right out of my front door and arrested me,” Vue, 43, said in an interview from the Freeborn County jail, where he’s being detained.
Vue reached out to Sahan Journal to share the story of his arrest — and a Ring camera video of him hugging his kids before he was taken away by officers — because he wanted the community to know how these arrests are happening to people who have turned their lives around after past convictions and built families and lives in the community.
When he spoke with Sahan on June 27, 12 other Hmong men were in detention with him and facing deportation. They are among at least 15 Hmong individuals arrested by federal agents in early June around the Twin Cities. Several immigration attorneys and family advocates told Sahan Journal they expected the detainees to be deported by the end of June.
“There’s a whole mix of emotions: One, I’m sad because I miss my family like crazy. I miss my kids, I miss my wife,” Vue said. “Second, I’m mad. Is this the kind of thanks that my people get for sacrificing blood and sweat for them?”
Despite nightly phone calls, Vue’s wife, Linda Xiong, still doesn’t know when he will be deported, most likely to Laos.
“It felt like in the blink of the eye, everything changed,” she said. “Now, my life has to shift. His life has to shift. I was shocked and mostly in fear.”
A complicated path growing up
Since the arrival of the first Hmong in Minnesota 50 years ago, Hmong refugees have rarely faced deportation, even those who were convicted and served time for crimes. However, the Trump administration’s campaign to deport millions and tighten immigration enforcement is causing a ripple effect for those with final orders of removal dating back decades.
Vue said he and some of the Hmong men detained in Freeborn County refused to sign notices for deportation to Laos.
Most, like Vue, immigrated to the United States as children in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. All have final orders of deportation because they have criminal convictions that are considered a removable offense by the federal government.
Vue was born in a Thai refugee camp and arrived in the country when he was 5, moving into what he described as “the projects” in north Minneapolis.
At 16, he was charged as an adult and convicted of first-degree criminal sexual misconduct as part of his involvement in gang activity. He pled guilty in 1998 and was sentenced to about a decade in prison.
Linda Xiong, Vue’s wife, said he felt constant shame and regret over his criminal history.
“I wish that, you know, that you can just go and tell the whole world, ‘Hey that’s not who he is,’” Xiong said. “He did do bad, there’s no denying that, but he paid his time.”
Both of Vue’s parents died when he was a child. His uncle and aunt raised him and his brother and sister in Minneapolis. Vue said he was too young to apply for U.S. citizenship or obtain a green card before he ended up in prison.
Under the Child Citizenship Act, children born outside the United States can obtain citizenship before they turn 18 if their parents become naturalized as citizens. However, the child can be barred from becoming a U.S. citizen after committing crimes considered removable offenses under immigration law.
Vue also believed that his aunt and uncle had adopted him and his siblings, and that he had U.S. citizenship under their custody, Xiong said, adding that he later found out that they were wards of the state.
“He didn’t even get the chance to try to get his citizenship because at 16, he was already basically on the removal list,” she said.
When he completed his sentence, he was ordered for deportation to Laos. In the past, Laos rarely issued travel documents to U.S. deportees, so when Vue was released from custody, he was required to complete yearly check-ins with immigration authorities.
Turning his life around
Vue said he has spent decades focused on improving his life.
“My life was just starting to get good. I mean, I was making six figures a year. I stayed out of trouble for all these years,” Vue said. “All of sudden, everything just ripped apart. I never thought this day would happen.”
Vue attended Hennepin Technical College to obtain several degrees, including as a supply chain technician and in mechatronics. He worked full-time as a licensed electrician for years before taking a job as a maintenance technician to support his family. He also started a small business selling plants he grew in the family’s backyard.
Vue said he was motivated to turn his life in a positive direction after seeing others become successful. Xiong met Vue in 2018, and they married a year later.
“He’s very driven,” she said.
They bought their Coon Rapids house in 2020, where they are raising Vue’s oldest son from a previous marriage and their couple’s two small children. Vue has two other children from a previous marriage who spend time with them as well.
“The hardest thing is that if they [federal agents] would have got me when I never started a family, I would’ve said, ‘Let’s go,’” Vue said. “But now I have a family, and I’m trying to be a father for my kids, and husband for my wife. I try so hard to have my kids not walk the same footsteps that I walk.”
Vue takes his sons fishing and hunting to “keep them out of trouble,” and said he encourages his children to pursue their interests, like dancing and collecting rocks.
“He wanted to show a good example to his children that you work hard and you get rewarded at the end,” Xiong said. “He’s just always wanted to teach his kids that: I came from nothing and look at where I am now.”
A week before the arrest
Typically once a year, Vue went to the Fort Snelling Immigration Office to check in with immigration authorities. Xiong said Vue talked to his family “to be prepared” for the possibility of his deportation from seeing the flood of news showing ramped up immigration enforcement.
At his immigration check-in May 30 — about a week before his arrest — Vue brought his family with him “just in case” he was detained, Xiong said, so they would get to see him “that one last time.” Xiong, his children, siblings, aunt and uncle, attended his check-in.
Xiong said after the immigration check-in, Vue left and he was told to return for another immigration check-in in six months. When Vue was arrested a week later, Xiong said she felt angry that he was told that he could leave and return in six months.
“For you guys to even let him out and almost, to me, deceive him that you have six months to stay with your family, right? Just to come and take him a week later — at that moment I was just scared, but I was more angry at them because it feels like they’re not sympathetic with us,” she said.
Vue is one of several men arrested earlier this month whose photos were posted on the HSI St. Paul account on X. He said the photo of him was taken without permission.
The posts show Hmong men in handcuffs, facing the camera, while anonymous officers restrain them, facing away. Each of the men is identified by name, age, criminal conviction and most are labeled “illegal alien” in the post.
Xiong said Vue was the family breadwinner. She’s now relying on relatives to care for her children while she’s at work. Her family also set up a GoFundMe page to help with the finances.
Aside from the financial impact, Xiong said the experience with the arresting officers has made her family fearful of opening the door. She also said her family is dealing with the emotional pain of not having Vue there at milestones for the children, like graduations and birthdays. Leon, Vue’s youngest son, turned 6 while he was in detention.
Xiong and Vue said they feel anxious from not knowing the exact date of his deportation. They also feel worried he could be sent to a third country. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, at least for now, that the Trump administration can deport immigrants to countries where they have no ties.
“It’s a tear in my heart,” Vue said. “If they don’t send me back to the country they say I’m a citizen of, I don’t want to go back to any other country except the country where that’s closest to who I am.”
Still, Xiong said on her phone calls with Vue every night, they both focus on being positive.
“I feel like they’re always forever judged. They can live 20, 30, 40, 50 years as a good person, but then that one crime would just always make them a bad person,” Xiong said, referring to the Hmong deportees. “It doesn’t matter all the good that they do — just that one crime, it’s all made their image who America sees them as.”
