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.
Linda Yang was driving to work on a cold February morning when a large white van seemingly appeared out of nowhere and cut her off. Other vehicles suddenly rushed in, blocking her on all sides.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents jumped out and approached her. They asked if they could go to her home and pick up her husband, Zong.
She refused. He was home with their youngest sons. She wouldn’t let things get messy in front of them. She wouldn’t let them take away the father of her five sons until they could say their goodbyes.
The agents told her they would come for Zong at 9 a.m. the next morning. Linda rushed to pick up her older sons from school. She called Zong.
“‘ICE is coming to get you,” she said. “They’re going to come tomorrow morning.”
Until recently, they had never thought Zong, 48, would be deported due to a felony burglary conviction from his twenties, which led to a final order of deportation. The couple felt safe from that possibility most of their marriage. But that sense of security shattered last year when local news outlets reported that Hmong residents from Minnesota and elsewhere were being deported to Laos.
Federal immigration agents had been watching their South St. Paul home. They confronted Linda on Feb. 4, a day before Zong was due for one of his regular check-ins with the ICE office at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal building.
A few months after agents swarmed Linda’s car, Zong was deported to Laos, a country he had never stepped foot in before. Overnight, Linda, 41, was turned into a single mother of five sons — King, 3; Titan, 7; Everest, 8; Kenji, 15; Yaay, 17.
“I guess it was just kind of like, ‘It’s real. It’s happening,’ you know?” a teary-eyed Linda told Sahan Journal. “The day that we thought that would never happen, happened.”
One last day
Several relatives trickled through Linda and Zong’s house for hours the day Linda was stopped by ICE, crying and joking at times in an attempt to lighten the mood until 2 a.m. Some of their siblings, cousins and Zong’s son from a previous marriage gave Zong a pep talk, assuring him they would support his family while he was in Laos.
Linda and Zong received several calls from an unknown number throughout the morning after Linda’s encounter with ICE. She finally picked up the call around noon. A federal agent was on the other end. ICE agents would take Zong to his check-in the next morning so he could fill out paperwork, and then he would be “released,” she said the agent told her. They also said they planned to take Zong to a different location instead of the Whipple building because of ongoing protests.
She let out a sigh of relief — Zong would return home, she thought. Still, questions lingered: Could she trust federal agents to tell the truth? ICE agents had never accompanied Zong to an appointment in the past.
Yaay, who family members refer to by his middle name, Aden, spent most of the day in his room like he would any other day, thinking his dad would return home after his immigration check-in the next day.
Zong sensed that his three youngest sons felt the heavy atmosphere in their house. They didn’t know why everyone had gathered, and Zong couldn’t bring himself to explain the situation. Instead, he told Everest, Titan and King multiple times that he loved them, and that he had to go away.
He told his two oldest sons, Yaay and Kenji, that he was facing potential deportation because of a felony conviction. They understood the gravity, having seen news coverage of Operation Metro Surge. He asked all of his sons for forgiveness, explaining that he was being taken away and not leaving them by choice.
“It’s nothing that you guys or mom did. It’s something I did – a mistake, way back before I met your mom, and now I have to face the consequences of it,” he told them.
Linda and Zong had discussed the deportation process with their oldest sons in the past year to prepare them for the possibility.
“I was more aware of it and knew what was going to happen, so I was already able to mentally prepare myself while they still can’t really grasp it,” said Yaay, referring to his younger brothers. “They’ll have to go through a lot more of their lives, compared to mine, without our dad.”
Part of Linda and Zong held onto some hope that federal agents would take Zong to his check-in the next morning and bring him home instead of detaining him for deportation. The other part slowly began accepting the painful reality that it could be Zong’s final hours with his family on U.S. soil.
Linda packed underwear, pants, shirts, socks and shorts for Zong. Zong grabbed his essentials: allergy medicine, hydrocortisone cream, contact lenses and his glasses. They laughed later when Zong found that Linda had packed only three shirts.
Thoughts of running away crept into Zong’s mind as family and friends continued arriving to say their goodbyes, but he told himself he couldn’t get away from his past.
“I just need to take it head on,” he told himself, comforted by the knowledge that Linda and his sons were by his side.
“That’s what really, really helped me mentally, too, but even at that, we’re all still human — we want to be with family, your kids, your wife, and it was a tug of war,” Zong said later as he reflected on the last night with his family.
Linda and Zong made breakfast for their sons the next morning. Linda’s phone buzzed again with a call from a federal agent. They wanted to detain Zong before 9 a.m. She refused. She didn’t want her sons’ last image of their father to be of him walking away with federal agents.
Wait until the boys board their buses and leave for school, she told the agent.
She felt relieved when the agent obliged. The agent told her they would send no more than two agents to the house, and agreed not to put Zong in handcuffs.
Yaay, Everest and Titan boarded their buses soon after the call as federal agents sat in vehicles idling nearby. Kenji, 15, stayed home to see his father off. About 9 a.m., less than 30 minutes after the last boys left, two federal agents came to the door. Zong grabbed his duffel bag and backpack. Linda and Zong hugged and kissed.
“What are the chances that you guys are really releasing him back to me?” she asked the agents.
They brushed her off, she said, saying they needed Zong for paperwork. She pressed on.
“Can I come with you?” she asked.
I didn’t know anything like this would happen. I wasn’t thinking of this side of the consequences.
Zong Yang
They wouldn’t allow her to get in their vehicle. She worried they would bring Zong to a “random warehouse.” But the federal agent on her front porch told her they were taking him to the Whipple building, contradicting what another agent had told her over the phone the previous day.
As the two agents drove off with Zong, five other vehicles parked on the same street quickly pulled away, said Linda, who was stunned that more agents had been concealed and waiting.
Linda’s brother sat in a vehicle nearby, ready to give chase. She joined him, eager to see Zong walk out of the Whipple building free to go home.
The past catches up
Linda and Zong started looking for attorneys early last year as news began circulating that Hmong residents were being deported. They worried that Zong could be next, and closely followed news about other cases, comparing them to his case.
“It [the detention of Hmong residents] didn’t bother me, but maybe it should’ve, but also maybe it was best that it didn’t get to me, because I would’ve ran or hid,” Zong told Sahan Journal in a video interview from Laos. “I didn’t know anything like this would happen. I wasn’t thinking of this side of the consequences.”
Laos historically refused to accept deportees from the United States, but shifted its stance early last year due to political pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration. It’s unclear how many Hmong and Southeast Asian residents have been deported to Laos. However, several Hmong Minnesotans have publicly documented loved ones’ deportations to Laos through Facebook or GoFundMe campaigns.
Linda and Zong held onto hope after seeing a few cases where Hmong detainees were released from federal custody. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer issued a pardon last year for Lue Yang, a father of six whose criminal conviction had been expunged, putting a stop to his deportation. Minnesota resident Thi Dua Vang, a refugee, was detained for two weeks in January before being released on bond.
But attorneys told the Yang family there was nothing they could do. The legal costs and severity of Zong’s criminal conviction made it difficult to change his fate.
Zong arrived in the United States with his family at age 3 after they fled Laos as refugees in the wake of the Vietnam War. Many Hmong, including children, had been recruited by the United States to serve as CIA-backed soldiers to fight against communists and to rescue downed American pilots and injured soldiers. As the U.S. military fled after the war, the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese militaries retaliated against the Hmong community for aiding the Americans, according to the Minnesota Historical Society.
Zong was born in a refugee camp in Thailand, and had never been issued citizenship in Thailand, Laos or the United States. He received a green card when he immigrated to the United States, and said he never applied for citizenship because he assumed that since his green card said, “Permanent Resident,” it secured his lifelong residency in the country.
He was convicted of felony burglary in Wisconsin in 1999 for stealing several semi-automatic handguns from the Gander Mountain store in Appleton, Wisconsin, when he was 21. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison, serving about seven years before he was released at the end of 2006, according to court records. His criminal record also includes a conviction for drug possession in 2019.
The burglary conviction is considered a removal offense by the federal government, and stripped Zong of his green card, and prevented him from ever applying for U.S. citizenship. It also resulted in a final order for deportation against him that required him to regularly check in with ICE at the Whipple building at the discretion of his immigration officer, or until the government could find a country that would accept him as a deportee.
“I should have not done anything like that, taking somebody else’s stuff. It was wrong,” Zong told Sahan Journal. “At that time, my mind was just, I was away from home, but my mind was just not where it was supposed to be.”
Zong moved to Minnesota for a job, and met Linda in 2007 through a mutual friend. She eventually moved to Minnesota from North Carolina, and the two married about a year later. They bought a house where their sons tousled on the living room floor.
Zong never kept his past from Linda. He attended his check-ins at the Whipple building for 20 years. Initially, he checked in every three months, but it varied from every six months to twice a year back to every three months.
Their prior sense of security against Zong’s deportation started falling apart when federal immigration agents started flooding Minnesota last year. In an effort to lighten the mood, they started joking about Zong being deported to Laos, imagining him in different careers and soaking up the warm weather, and Linda visiting on vacation.
She pictured growing old with him in Laos after the children had all grown up. They’d retire and buy a house there.
Zong makes a plea for his spirit
Zong arrived at the Whipple building for the last time on Feb. 5, 2026, a chilly Thursday morning. Linda and her brother parked outside the building for about an hour and a half, waiting to pick him up after his check-in.
Federal agents put shackles around Zong’s ankles, and brought him into a room with other shackled detainees. He knew he would never return home.
He called Linda, who was still waiting outside. She broke down in tears. He was shipped to Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, a few hours later.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to questions about federal agents’ interactions with the Yang family.
Zong said there was no time to file any legal challenges in hopes of keeping him in the country or releasing him from custody, or to arrange a visit with an attorney before he was deported.
Zong met about 50 other Hmong, Lao and Vietnamese men while detained in Texas. They were all later transferred to the El Paso Processing Center, where he said they were held for two months.
“It’s just so many thoughts and emotions running through my head,” Zong said of his state of mind while in federal custody. “It was just more of like, ‘This is it.’”
Zong still gets overwhelmed with emotions thinking about the day he was detained and the three months he spent in federal custody. He’s angry that federal agents tried to pick him up a day before his regular ICE check-in, and falsely give his family hope that he would return home after the check-in. But he’s also grateful that he was able to say goodbye.
“It was better than just getting snatched up and not spending time with my kids and my wife, you know?” Zong said of his last day with his family.
In many cases, federal agents detained people at work, during traffic stops or while they were fueling their cars at the gas station. Agents detained people at bus stops, and while visiting businesses door-to-door in immigrant-dense neighborhoods. They detained children on their way home from school, broke into homes without warrants and arrested U.S. citizens, chasing and tackling people in the streets and snow.
Zong, who practices traditional Hmong shamanism, looked out the airplane window on his deportation flight in early May, and pleaded to the heavens to allow his spirit to follow him to Laos, and to let his family know that he did not choose to leave them.
“I would never ever be able to step on this American soil again. I would never ever see my kids on American soil, where we built our home,” he recalled thinking at the time.
The Yang family’s new chapter
Zong arrived in the Lao capital, Vientiane, on May 9, and was moved into a detention facility for U.S. deportees run by the Lao government. He found a sponsor, who is Hmong and a Lao citizen, to help vouch for him so he could move out into independent housing. Laos requires deportees to find a sponsor, complete multiple rounds of interviews with Lao officials and finish paperwork before leaving the detention facility.
Zong was intimidated buying food at the local market his first few days, because he doesn’t speak the Lao language. But he’s settling in, and making an effort to get to know other deportees. He spends his days going on walks, exploring the city and building up his confidence.
I was expecting to go through all this with him, and for him to be there during my achievements. But it honestly has pushed me a little in some aspects just to do better, and be better.
Yaay Yang
He now lives in an apartment about 15 minutes from the National University of Laos in Vientiane. He calls Linda and their sons every day on Facebook or WhatsApp around 7 p.m. Minnesota time, or 7 a.m. Lao time, and once more before he goes to sleep
Zong and Linda are coping with the turmoil of his deportation by documenting their journey on Facebook to help others going through the same experience, and to help their younger sons understand their father’s story one day. They’ve shared more than 50 posts through written entries, videos and photos chronicling their family’s separation.
Linda, an accountant, has always been the family breadwinner, but Zong’s absence has added financial strain on their family. Zong was working as an overnight freight worker at Home Depot in Inver Grove Heights when he was deported.
She got rid of one of their vehicles to cut costs, and finds comfort in the support she’s received from family members. Her nephew and aunt have helped babysit King. Relatives visit more often these days to check on her family. But there’s only so much other family members can do to shore up Zong’s absence.
Linda and Zong’s eldest son, Yaay, graduates from South St. Paul Secondary this year, and plans to attend Winona State University this fall.
“It is hard just going through all this without him,” said Yaay, 17. “I was expecting to go through all this with him, and for him to be there during my achievements. But it honestly has pushed me a little in some aspects just to do better, and be better.”
Linda and Yaay sat on a sofa in the family’s home in early May as Everest and Titan played with their cousins upstairs. King napped in another room. They cried and laughed as they recalled the last few months and thought about the year ahead without Zong. They didn’t know what the future would bring, but one thing was certain — they wouldn’t let an ocean keep their family apart.
