Southeast Asian refugees cast out of Trump’s US face exile in unknown lands

Last Updated on February 8, 2026 6:06 pm

By Aidan Jones

The tattoo on his arm reads “buc Lao” (Laos boy) but Kham Paneboun is not a Laotian citizen. In fact, he’s not really from anywhere.

In February last year, US Homeland Security detained him for a felony committed as a teenager, revoked his work permit and – after decades of legal residence – deported him to Laos, a country he had never set foot in.

Kham, 43, was torn from his wife and four children, aged three to 12, who remain in Texas – a family now paying for a “bad mistake” he made in his late teens: an aggravated assault that led to two years in prison and the loss of his green card.

He insists, and produces letters of support from his employer as proof, that he has committed no offence since his release, living lawfully in the US for 17 years as a warehouse foreman and family man.

But his last annual check-in with immigration authorities coincided with the first month of US President Donald Trump’s second term: one defined by vows to hunt down “the illegal alien criminals” and throw them “the hell out of our country”.

In the ICE age – the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement – that routine appointment became a trapdoor to deportation.

Source : SCMP