Don’t deport our Hmong and Laotian neighbors whose forebears saved U.S. soldiers

Hmong and Laotian Americans are preparing to mark in May the 45th anniversary of refugee resettlement to America. Instead of embracing and celebrating our unique stories, the Trump administration quite ironically is aggressively pursuing secret talks with the government of Laos to secure a repatriation agreement to deport 4,700 Hmong and Lao residents with final orders of removal from the United States.

Unlike his predecessors Bill Clinton, George Bush and Barack Obama, Donald J. Trump is using heavy-handed tactics to remove Hmong and Laotian residents who might have committed minor offenses but have paid their dues and already served time. Hmong and Laotian are not criminal aliens and they are not immigrants; they are refugee children of Hmong and Lao veterans whose immigration status — I-94 and Green Cards — was stripped by immigration officials when they committed offenses which denied their pathway toward citizenship in this country.

Deporting Hmong and Laotian residents back to Laos not only tears families apart but is an insult and betrayal to the more than 35,000 soldiers of Hmong descent who were killed during the war in Laos from 1960 to 1975. Hmong and many Laotian served under the pre-1975 Royal Lao Government, and they were America’s friends during the Secret War in Laos.

Many who served under Military Region III and IV were assigned to interdict the North Vietnamese Army supply lines along the Ho Chi Minh trails bypassing Laos onto South Vietnam and Cambodia throughout the Vietnam War. Irregular forces under the Royal Lao Army were trained by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Thai PARU (Border Patrol Aerial Reinforcement Units) and their roles were to assist U.S. operations in Laos, including rescuing and recovering American servicemen and pilots.

They risked their lives willingly, without asking for political affiliation. The Hmong did not pick and choose to rescue or recover a Republican pilot or a Democratic pilot; they rescued and recovered all American servicemen and pilots.

As the war in Laos dragged on, the Hmong and Laotian soldiers of the special forces paid terrible prices, with heavy loss of lives. Arthur Dommen Jr., a senior scholar of Laos, wrote, “Among the sorriest of the exiles were the Hmong, who were virtually destroyed as a significant ethnic group as a result of the years of warfare, dislocation, and, finally, a determined extermination campaign mounted against them.”

When the United States withdrew from South Vietnam on 30 April 1975, thousands of South Vietnamese refugees, Cambodians, Hmong and Laotian refugees were streaming across the Mekong River into Thailand, and the majority were resettled to the United States.

Today, California is home to more than 100,000 Hmong, 70,000 Laotians, 100,000 Cambodians and 600,000 Vietnamese. California has one of the largest Southeast Asian refugee populations in the country. Hmong and Laotian Americans are resilient community members who have contributed immeasurably to the success of California’s economy as entrepreneurs, high-tech engineers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, soldiers, police officers, farmers, and factory workers.

Deporting our people back to where they had fled persecution and retribution is wrong and immoral. The government of Laos continues to rank very low on the world index for human rights abuse, including arbitrary arrests and forced disappearance.

The Trump administration needs to honor our history and cease from deporting Hmong and Laotian back to Laos. The Hmong and Laotian did not choose to come to America initially; it was the Americans who stepped on their land first.