Ricky Chandee, an engineering technician for the city of Minneapolis, was brushing his teeth when ICE came knocking in late January. It was 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning when his sister-in-law heard banging on the door of the house they share in Brooklyn Park. She checked the Ring camera, saw about eight federal agents and screamed. For decades, Chandee lived with the knowledge this day could come. The week before, a Laotian family friend had been taken in a home raid by armed federal agents. Chandee's family discussed what to do if ICE came for him. They decided they would be compliant, open the door and do everything by the book. That's how Chandee lived his life for the past three decades, after being convicted of a drive-by shooting at 18, an episode that would cast a pall over the rest of his life. Within a day of his detainment, Chandee was transported to a detention center in El Paso, Texas, where he awaits possible deportation. Chandee is among a specific group of Minnesotans — Laotians whose families fled after the Vietnam War and legally settled here as refugees — who, because of history, politics and crimes they committed decades ago, now risk being sent back to Laos, where they don't speak the language, don't have family, and are unlikely to be welcomed as citizens. Convicted of felonies, they were never granted American citizenship. But because Laos doesn't have a formal repatriation agreement with the U.S., many with removal orders couldn't be deported for years. (U.S. Department of Homeland Security statistics show only about 50 people were deported to Laos from 2010 to 2020.) They served their prison sentences and in many cases never reoffended. They built quiet lives in Minnesota, marrying and having U.S.-born children. But under the second Trump administration's mass deportation agenda, the U.S. is pressuring Laos to issue travel documents for deportees, according to the Asian Law Caucus, the nation's oldest Asian American civil rights organization. Since May 2025, more than 400 people have been deported to Laos, said Chanida Phaengdara Potter, co-director of ROOTS Laos, an organization helping this population resettle in Laos. She describes this unprecedented deportation rate of Southeast Asians who came to the U.S. after the Vietnam War — America's largest refugee group — as a "re-refugee crisis" for Laos. "There's trauma from forced displacement and grief from not fully grasping one's mother tongue, but there's also beauty in reconnecting with one's roots," she said. A life in legal limbo Some of the offenses these Minnesotans committed were more serious than others, ranging from theft to sexual assault, according to cases examined by the Minnesota Star Tribune. Some have successfully staved off deportation, while others remain in detention and could be deported any day. Ounheuan Hong, the 57-year-old head chef of Ginger Café in Ramsey, has been detained at Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, for nearly three months. Masked federal agents showed up at Hong's house with their guns drawn. They broke down the door and detained him without a warrant, according to a wrongful detainment lawsuit filed by his lawyer, Razeen Zaman of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Hong was about 6 years old when his family fled Laos for a Thai refugee camp, and they eventually resettled in America. Nearly 20 years ago, Hong was convicted of an aggravated felony involving drugs and a firearm, which resulted in a final order of removal in 2010. But because the U.S. wasn't able to deport him at the time, he completed his sentence and returned to the community, cooking at Ginger Café and eventually dating the restaurant's owner, May Sayasone. He became stepfather to her son from a previous relationship, and fathered a girl who's now 9 years old. Without Hong around, Sayasone is running the kitchen and raising the children alone. Their daughter keeps saying she wants her dad home in time for her birthday in August. "She asks if he's ever going to come home," Sayasone said. " I don't want to lie to her. I don't know either if daddy will come back home or get sent somewhere ... I don't know how she's taking it as a 9-year-old." Hong's criminal record has limited his immigration relief options, his lawyer, Zaman, said. Still, they believe federal agents violated his due process rights by spontaneously detaining him without properly revoking the order of supervision he'd been complying with for the past 15 years, having never missed an ICE check-in. ICE has declared Hong will be put on a removal flight to Laos before April 3, Zaman said. She hopes the judge will stay that flight, or that the Laotian consulate will deny his travel document. There's a measles outbreak at Camp East Montana, Zaman points out, which should make any government think twice about accepting deportees from that detention center. Children of the Secret War Chandee left Laos when he was a year old and doesn't speak the language. Hong doesn't read or write Lao. Neither of them have connections in Laos because both of their families were uprooted by the Secret War — a U.S. anti-communism campaign during the Vietnam War, so called because the CIA concealed it from Congress — and the concurrent Laotian Civil War. People deported to Laos wouldn't automatically be accepted as Laotian citizens, said Chandee's lawyer, Linus Chan, director of the University of Minnesota's Detainee Rights Clinic. They would be detained until they find a sponsor — someone to assume financial responsibility for them. Even then they would be considered stateless, unable to leave the country because they wouldn't have passports, and likely unable to buy a car, a home or land. There's a growing community of "returnees" in Laos led by people who grew up in America and were deported last year, said Phaengdara Potter of ROOTS Laos. They help each other process the shock of removal and move forward. Life in Laos gets easier as people pick up the language, she said. "People are surviving and thriving in various ways," she said. "They are humans who are doing their best to start a new chapter." All they know is AmericaLike Hong's, Chandee's family fled to Thailand, where they lived in a refugee camp until the U.S. agreed to resettle them. They touched down in California, then moved around before settling in Minnesota. One day their father returned to Thailand alone, abandoning his wife and children, recalled Chandee's elder brother, Toon. "It hit some of us hard," Toon said. "That's why some of the kids rebelled, because there was no father figure there anymore." The summer after high school, Chandee made a decision he would pay for in prison, and again decades later. He and a friend went to Windom for a county fair. An altercation led to Chandee shooting two local 18-year-olds in the legs with a .25 caliber pistol, according to the criminal charges. It's unclear what motivated the shooting. The police department told the Star Tribune the original report no longer exists. Chandee's family intimates racial discrimination came into play in the small, southwest Minnesota town. A group of people "caused problems" and the two Laotians from out of town "stood up for themselves," Toon said. The Star Tribune reached one of the victims, Michael Ferguson, but he declined to comment. Chandee pled guilty to second-degree assault and was sentenced to three years in prison. While serving time, he earned an engineering certificate, which eventually helped him get a job with the city of Minneapolis that turned into a 26-year career. Aaron Gilbrech, Chandee's supervisor and friend, told the Star Tribune Chandee was a model employee, and the Public Works department has rallied around his family's fundraising campaign. "We want him to come back," Gilbrech said. "At what point are you not considered a criminal? At what point do you deem somebody a contributing member of society and not a convicted felon?" Deporting someone 31 years after he was released from prison "certainly can feel like double punishment," said Chan, Chandee's lawyer. "He was a young man when it happened," Chan said. "We hope that young men are able to turn things around. And that's what he did. He never got into any trouble again." Chandee's wife is a U.S. citizen, and his son from a previous marriage is in the U.S. Air Force, stationed in Germany. Chan is challenging Chandee's detention, and applied for a state pardon, but that process will likely take too long to stop his deportation, which could happen any day. His mother, Kham Lamb, struggled to find the words to express how it feels to know she fled Laos to protect her family, but now can't prevent her son from being repatriated to Laos, right where he started. "Bring him home," she said. Josie Albertson-Grove of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.