Marijuana Conviction Leads to Deportation of Milwaukee Woman

March 20, 2025

In 2020, Ma Yang was arrested on marijuana trafficking charges. The Milwaukee resident, who migrated to the U.S. from Thailand in 1988 when she was less than a year old, got caught up in an illegal operation that involved mailing cannabis to California from a building she had moved into with her partner and five children. Twenty-five other people were charged in the case and Yang eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 months in jail.

"I made a mistake and I know that I was wrong," the 37-year-old woman says. "But I served the time for it already."

While in jail, Yang's green card was revoked. In exchange for her release, she signed a deportation order document. In February, Yang was detained during a check-in appointment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and sent to a prison in Indiana. Since her parents were actually from Laos, Yang didn't expected to be deported (Laos usually doesn't cooperate with such orders), but that is what happened. After a stop in South Korea, Yang was flown to Laos capitol Vientiane on March 6 and remains there today.

"The United States sent me back to die," she says.

Yang's life is a paradox. Born in refugee camp in Thailand after the Vietnam War, she descends from Hmong people of Laos, a sub-groiup of the Miao people of Southwestern China. Threatened with genocide, many Hmong left China, heading south to Vietnam and Laos. In the '60s, the CIA recruited Hmong to fight against North Vietnam who had invaded Laos. They were known as the "Secret Army."

Now, Yang has been secreted away in a country she doesn't know or even speak the language. What's happening to her is Orwellian. A diabetic, she has no insulin and is running short of her blood-pressure medication. Apparently, Yang was told she could leave from where she's detained, but declined. "How do I rent or buy anything with no papers?" Yang wonders. "I'm nobody right now."

Like other Americans who've been arrested and detained for cannabis in countries around the world, Yang's case should be considered among them and work for her immediate release. Donate to Ma Yang's GoFund me page here.