Taken: A family’s story of deportation is an occasional series that will publish throughout the year following the Yang family as they navigate a new normal without husband and father, Zong, who was deported to Laos in May. Linda Yang is now raising their sons alone in South St. Paul, juggling the needs of a recent high school graduate and four other boys ranging in age from 3 to 15.
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Everest Yang watched his tablet on a recent morning while his brother, Titan, laid on the couch wrapped in a fuzzy blanket watching a Japanese anime on TV about a young pirate on a voyage to find lost treasure. Their brother, King, sat on the ottoman, eyes glued to the TV.
The boys’ mother, Linda Yang, worked on her laptop nearby in the dining room, glancing at them occasionally. A voice suddenly broke through the Monday morning calm at 8 a.m.
“Put your shoes on, boys,” the boys’ father called out.
King, 3, swiftly straightened his posture and turned towards his father’s voice. Titan, 7, peeled the blanket off and grabbed his socks. Everest, 9, scooched off the couch and followed Titan.
“Love you guys,” said their father, Zong Yang.
It was a cloudy mid-September morning in South St. Paul, but outside Zong’s apartment, a heavy rain fell in the pitch black darkness as the electricity inside sporadically flickered on and off.
Zong reminded the boys to head outside to their school bus like he had done so many other times before, only this time, he was thousands of miles away.
Zong, 49, was arrested by federal agents in February during Operation Metro Surge, and deported to Laos in early May. Now, he lives alone in an apartment near the capital, Vientiane, and speaks with his sons every school day through Ring cameras installed in the family’s home in South St. Paul. Zong is 12 hours ahead of his family; when it’s 8 a.m. in Minnesota, it’s 8 p.m. in Laos.
Linda, 41, has been adjusting to life as a single parent raising their five sons – King, 3; Titan, 7; Everest, 8; Kenji, 15; Yaay, 17. Kenji left earlier that morning to attend high school, which starts at 7:30 a.m. Yaay graduated from South St. Paul Secondary high school in June, and started classes this fall at Winona State University in southeastern Minnesota.
“There’s times when I’m just sitting, laying in bed or laying out on the couch just on my phone, and that’s when my mind wanders off and I start to think about my kids and, ‘Why am I here by myself?’” Zong told Sahan Journal. “It’s hard to wake up, and the apartment is silent.”
‘I’m just so far away’
Several Ring cameras are set up throughout the Yang home in Minnesota, including in the living room and front yard. Zong watches his family through the cameras every day on his cellphone.
“It works out good; it gives me a little peace back,” he said. “[I] try to be as much involved as I could, even though if it’s just over the phone, even if it’s just on a Ring camera – just letting them know that I’m still there to guide them for the day when they wake up. It’s just a lot of emotion at that time from 8:00 to 8:45.”
Before his deportation, Zong worked the overnight shift at Home Depot in Inver Grove Heights. He’d return home around 5:30 a.m. and take a nap or stay up until his sons woke up for school. He’d set three alarms on his phone to remind himself of his youngest sons’ morning routine: 8 a.m. to brush their teeth, 8:20 a.m. to get dressed and 8:35 a.m. to get the boys out the door for the bus.
On the recent September morning, Linda called out to Everest and Titan from the dining room around 8:30 a.m. as they prepared to leave for the school bus.
“You guys have anything in your folders I need to look at?” she asked.
“No,” Everest replied.
Titan handed her a manila envelope about a school fundraiser. She read the note and asked him if he wanted to participate. No, he said. She combed Everest and Titan’s hair. Zong made instant noodles for dinner at the same time.
Everest and Titan waited for the bus at the end of their street, running around each other in play. Most mornings, Zong had watched from the family’s front lawn with King by his side as they got on the bus; Linda would have already left for work by then.
“Because he worked third shift, he was able to come and make sure the boys did this – it helped out a lot,” Linda said. “But now, it’s like, ‘Okay, well, got to figure it all out now, a whole new different time.’”
This morning, Linda sat on the front steps and waved to Everest and Titan after they boarded the bus. King stuck close to her. Zong, who now watches them from a Ring camera on the front door, previously spent the rest of his day at home with King.
“That was my morning with the kids when I was still there with them,” he told Sahan Journal. “Now, Linda has to double work, and she has to make adjustments so the boys can have somebody at the school bus and be home with them.”
As the school year approached, Linda worried about how she’d rearrange her morning for the new routine and balance the need to work in person at her office.
“We were always trying to figure out what we needed to do, or how we’re going to make it work,” she said.
Linda drops King off at preschool around 8:50 a.m., talks to Zong on the car ride back to their house, and works from home until 11 a.m. She then picks up King from school and takes him to a relative who babysits him so she can head to her office to work in person.
Zong feels a wave of pain after he finishes talking to his sons every morning.
“It’s times like this that hit you hard, you know? Why am I not there? I’m just so far away,” he told Sahan Journal.
The hardest part for Linda is watching King grow up without the same amount of time with Zong that their older sons received.
“Everest, Titan, Aden, Kenji — they all had their father in their life, so they were able to understand who their dad is, and what their dad was able to do,” she said. “He’s [King] not going to understand, other than knowing that he has older brothers, and has uncles that are going to be there for him.”
King sometimes jumps on her, attempting to wrestle with her like he used to with his dad.
“I could see in his eyes that he misses that,” she said tearfully.
Zong often posts videos of his life in Laos on Facebook to share his adjustment with friends and family. Sometimes, Linda and their sons watch the videos and wonder what life would be like if Zong was still with them in Minnesota.
Titan once watched a video of Zong’s trip to the zoo in Laos
“Dad would take us too, right?” Titan asked Linda.
“Yeah, dad would have taken you guys, too, if you guys were there,” she answered.
‘We can’t look at it like this is the end’
When Linda has time alone, she calls Zong on the phone and talks about their children and future. The calls are a lifeline in their marriage.
“We can’t look forward to tomorrow. We can’t look forward to next week. We have to look forward, like, in three to five years,” she said. “That’s the only thing that’s continuing with our relationship, and keeping us strong and making sure that we continue to be there for each other.”
Linda regularly sends him photos: Everest kicking a soccer ball at practice, King flying a kite, the first day of school, their three youngest sons and Linda eating shaved ice at the Minnesota State Fair. She recently shipped physical copies of family photos to Zong.
“We’re always thinking about him in everything that we do,” she said. “It’s never a day that passes by that we don’t think of him.”
Zong is slowly finding his footing in Laos. While he doesn’t work, he offered to help teach his friend’s son English, even though he’s never taught English before. He watched YouTube videos to learn the basics of teaching a new language.
Linda and Zong have talked about him obtaining Lao citizenship and a passport so they can travel to other countries together, and Linda retiring in Laos after all of their sons are grown.
“We can’t look at it like this is the end,” Linda said of Zong’s deportation.
Zong was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and immigrated to the United States with his family when he was 3 years old. Following the end of the Vietnam war, many Hmong people, including Zong’s family, fled Laos as refugees due to political persecution for aiding the United States. An estimated one-fourth of the Hmong men and boys who were recruited died in service, according to the Minnesota Historical Society.
Zong never obtained citizenship in Laos, Thailand or the United States. He lost his green card when he was convicted in 1999 of felony burglary for stealing several semi-automatic handguns from a Gander Mountain store in Appleton, Wisconsin. He was also barred from applying for U.S. citizenship and given a final order of deportation.
Zong, who lived in Minneapolis at the time, was introduced to Linda while she was living in North Carolina. They met in person in 2007, and married a year later.
Linda, who plans to visit Zong in early December, video chatted with him that September morning after their sons left for school.
“Right now it seems so surreal, like it’s not true,” Linda told Sahan Journal while Zong watched via a video call on her phone. “But I think once we actually reunite, it’ll bring everything down and we’ll be able to plan and move forward with what we really want to do with our lives.”
Zong described the visit as a “stepping stone” in planning for their future.
“We need just to hold each other just to say, ‘Hey, babe, we’re good, let’s keep on fighting forward,’” he said. “We’re able to hold each other, touch each other in the flesh, able to tell each other and say, ‘Hey, it’s going to be fine.’ Instead of just over the phone, just looking through the lens.
“It’s now I get to hold my wife and say, ‘Baby, we went through this hump, and now let’s continue forward.’”
Zong said he has experienced depression since his deportation, and struggles with being apart from his family while trying to maintain a positive outlook on the future. Some days, he still thinks he’ll eventually wake up in Minnesota.
“Even now, I still can’t accept the fact that I’m really here,” he said.
Zong moved into his apartment a few months after arriving in Laos. One of the first things he did to make his place feel like home was buy a lego set that reminded him of how he bonded with his boys over legos back home.
“Doing this, just feeling that little feeling again of being with my sons, you know — pieces everywhere and stuff like that,” he said.
