![\"Thi](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/STP-L-DETAINEE-0216-02.jpg\")
Thi Dua Vang kisses her one-year-old granddaughter, Pang Chia, as she and her husband, A Pao Giang, speak with journalists at an undisclosed location on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (John Autey \/ Pioneer Press)<\/p>\nWa Chi Minh Vang spent nine years in jail in Vietnam, where he ran afoul of government operatives for preaching Christianity within the country\u2019s tight-knit Hmong community. His father, he said, died in jail, but Wa Chi Minh Vang never stopped advocating for greater religious freedom through his \u201cHmong United for Justice\u201d YouTube channel, which he ran for years from Minnesota in an attempt to rally fellow refugees to the cause.<\/p>\n
After seven years in a refugee camp in Thailand, his sister Thi Dua Vang, her husband and five other members of their family were finally able to join him in St. Paul in December 2023, when eight Hmong-Vietnamese families arrived together in the Twin Cities. The area\u2019s Hmong-Vietnamese Christian community had suddenly nearly doubled in size.<\/p>\n
Thi Dua Vang kisses her one-year-old granddaughter, Pang Chia, as she and her husband, A Pao Giang, speak with journalists at an undisclosed location on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (John Autey \/ Pioneer Press)<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very, very small,\u201d said Wa Chi Minh Vang, sitting with his sister, her husband and their granddaughter, who remain in hiding together in Minnesota following Thi Dua Vang\u2019s two-week detention last month by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. \u201cWe\u2019re just 20 families.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Wa](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/STP-L-DETAINEE-0216-05.jpg\")
Wa Chi Minh Vang talks about his sister, Thi Dua Vang, with journalists at an undisclosed location on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (John Autey \/ Pioneer Press)<\/p>\n
Thi Dua Vang\u2019s life changed on the morning of Jan. 8, and not for the better. At 7:40 a.m., federal agents knocked on the door of her St. Paul rental home. Thi Dua Vang, a grocery worker, had put in late hours the night before and was still in bed, but her 11-year-old son opened the door.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you know this guy?\u201d they asked him, showing him a name. \u201cOh, that\u2019s my mom!\u201d her son replied.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere\u2019s your mom?\u201d they pressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mom\u2019s still sleeping,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Within minutes, the federal agents had roused Thi Dua Vang from bed. Two years after relocating to Minnesota, praying for a better life, the 49-year-old\u2019s next ordeal began. She and her husband are in the U.S. legally and in the process of acquiring green cards.<\/p>\n
In the month since, her experience has underscored the scope of both Operation Metro Surge<\/a> and Operation PARRIS<\/a>, two federal efforts that claim to focus on detaining \u201cthe worst of the worst\u201d while re-interviewing lawful refugees whose permanent residency applications are still in the pipeline. Critics, from civil rights advocates to federal judges<\/a>, have pointed to detentions like Vang\u2019s as they question why the federal government\u2019s tactics have aggressively detained unwitting, everyday workers who have no criminal history and face no criminal charges.<\/p>\n In a written statement, a media office for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said of Thi Dua Vang: \u201cThis individual was in the United States without legal status and was arrested by ICE. They have been released on bond and will have their day in court.\u201d<\/p>\n A two-week ordeal<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in Thi Dua Vang\u2019s St. Paul home, the federal agents explained they needed to check paperwork related to her application for a permanent residency credential known as a green card.<\/p>\n The agents collected all of the papers she showed them, including her personal I.D. and her Social Security card, in a bag. Then they quickly collected her and transported her to the Bishop Henry Whipple Building, a federal office building at Fort Snelling that has doubled as a detention facility during Operation Metro Surge, the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s weeks-long immigration enforcement action.<\/p>\n The next day, she was boarded onto a plane to El Paso, Texas, where she was held for about a week in a chilly, prison-like setting, surrounded by other women, most of them Spanish-speakers. Unable to speak English or Spanish, Thi Dua Vang said she was at a loss to communicate with others around her. On Jan. 12, she was boarded onto yet another plane, where she was the only woman among a large group of Latin men.<\/p>\n From her best understanding of the situation, she recalled, she thought she was headed back to Vietnam alone.<\/p>\n \u201cShe has no criminal history,\u201d said Wa Chi Minh Vang, at a loss to understand why the government would attempt to deport her, while translating questions from a reporter to her and her husband during a recent interview. \u201cShe has no criminal anything. She works in a grocery store and comes home. She\u2019s been here just two years.\u201d<\/p>\n The airplane taxied out toward the runway, and then taxied back, she said. Her name was called. She was taken off the plane and placed back in detention, with little understanding of why. Within three days, she was transported to another federal facility, this one in Houston, Texas, where she shared another chilly detention cell with 20 other women, most of them Spanish speakers.<\/p>\n During her two weeks in detention, food consisted of a light soup for breakfast, a potato for lunch and another for dinner. She was never offered the opportunity to go outside for fresh air, to stretch her legs or see the sun.<\/p>\n A court appearance on Jan. 20 resulted in an offer: she could get out of detention on a $3,500 bond. Her family, through an attorney, agreed to pay the sum, though it was unclear why she would be considered a flight risk or on what charges she was being held on. Wa Chi Minh Vang and her husband drove for the better part of two days, spending the night in Oklahoma City. At 3 p.m. on Jan. 21, they received an email indicating Thi Dua Vang would be freed within three hours.<\/p>\n Even driving as fast as they could without getting pulled over, they were still at least seven hours away.<\/p>\n Released from the federal detention facility in Houston near 8 p.m. with her cell phone but no documents, Thi Dua Vang made a plaintive call to her family. She had nowhere to go but to linger outside the federal buildings, which would not allow her to stay in the lobby.<\/p>\n \u201cAre you guys coming?\u201d she asked. \u201cThey released me outside.\u201d<\/p>\n Her husband and brother were still almost four hours away, they said. They asked her to use her phone to take pictures of her whereabouts so they could use the surroundings as landmarks to find her. At 11 p.m., the three were tearfully reunited, having overcome just the first two-week hurdle in what\u2019s become an ongoing immigration nightmare.<\/p>\n Once back in Minnesota, Thi Dua Vang found she had lost her job at the grocery store as someone had already taken her place. She checked in with ICE officials, who told her to make annual visits to their office from now on. Her husband and brother brought her to Driver and Vehicle Services to see about replacing her missing I.D. and other documents confiscated but never returned by ICE.<\/p>\n Then, at 11 a.m. on Jan. 27, came another knock on her door. It was federal agents \u2014 again. This time, she knew not to open up for them. They returned on the afternoon of Jan. 31, but again walked away empty-handed, though it did not appear they walked far. Relatives spotted two large Black vehicles parked on either side of her home until 2 a.m. the next morning.<\/p>\n Since then, she\u2019s gone into hiding with her husband, praying that ICE will finally leave her alone.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s very, very scared,\u201d Wa Chi Minh Vang said. Her husband is equally apprehensive but also optimistic. America is supposed to be the land of the free, he said. For two years, for his family, it had been.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s scared of driving,\u201d Wa Chi Minh Vang said. \u201cHe says, \u2018We\u2019re not angry. We suffered persecution in Vietnam and went to Thailand, and we came to this country. We trust God. We don\u2019t have the power to do anything, but we trust God.’\u201d<\/p>\n![\"After](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/STP-L-DETAINEE-0216-03.jpg\")
After spending two weeks in federal detention, Thi Dua Vang, right, tearfully embraces her husband, A Pao Giang, outside a federal facility in Houston, Texas on Jan. 21, 2026. (Courtesy of Wa Chi Minh Vang)<\/p>\n![\"Thi](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/STP-L-jea-06-THI_DUA_VANG-0210.jpg\")
Thi Dua Vang with her and husband Apao Yang talk to a reporter at an undisclosed location on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (John Autey \/ Pioneer Press)
\nReleased, and then hounded<\/p>\n