Scott Bailey sat in the Detroit ICE field office lobby for two hours on the morning of July 30, 2025. His wife Pang had walked in for her annual immigration check-in, the same appointment she had kept every year since 2007. An agent came out to the lobby. Not Pang.
“Your wife is being detained. You cannot see her.”
Scott drove home alone. He has not been in the same country as his wife since.
Pang Nhia Hang Bailey, 53, a Hmong refugee from Warren, Michigan, had lived in the United States for 47 years. She was detained on July 30, 2025, transferred through detention facilities across multiple states over six weeks, and deported to Laos on August 13, 2025. As of March 28, 2026, she remains in Vientiane, over 8,000 miles from her four children and the husband she married in 1999.
Table of Contents
At a Glance
- Full name: Pang Nhia Hang Bailey
- Age at detention: 53
- Years in the United States: 47 (arrived 1978, deported 2025)
- Detained: July 30, 2025, Detroit ICE field office
- Deported to: Vientiane, Laos, August 13, 2025
- Conviction: Federal bank fraud, guilty plea May 2000
- Family left behind: Husband Scott Bailey, four children, Warren, Michigan
- Status as of March 2026: Still in Laos
Who Is Pang Bailey?
Pang was born in Laos in 1972 into a Hmong family whose relatives fought alongside CIA forces during America’s covert Secret War in Laos. Her family fled to France in 1973, when she was less than one year old. In 1978, at six years old, they resettled in the United States as part of the federal refugee program extended to Hmong families persecuted after the Vietnam War.
The Hmong people had spent more than a decade fighting with US forces in Laos, running supply interdiction operations, gathering intelligence, and pulling downed American pilots out of the jungle. When US forces withdrew, the new Lao communist government came after them. Survivors crossed into Thailand and spent years in refugee camps. Between 1975 and 2008, the US resettled over 1.2 million Southeast Asian refugees, including tens of thousands of Hmong families.
Pang settled in Michigan. In 1995, while working at a restaurant, she met Scott Bailey. They married in September 1999. Their four children, Skylyer, Scarlytte, Scott III, and Sylus, were all born in Warren. She has type 2 diabetes that requires ongoing medical care. Her green card had expired in 1995.
What Was Pang Bailey’s Criminal Conviction?
In February 2000, federal prosecutors indicted both Pang and Scott Bailey for bank fraud. Court records reviewed by Newsweek showed the indictment alleged they had “knowingly executed a scheme to defraud and to obtain money and funds under the care and custody of a financial institution.”
Pang pleaded guilty in May 2000. That federal conviction meant immigration authorities would not renew her expired green card. A removal order was entered in her immigration file.
Starting in 2007, she reported for annual ICE check-ins, first by phone, later in person. She completed 18 of them without incident. Each appointment ended the same way: she went home.
The 18th one did not.
Why Was Pang Bailey Detained at a Routine ICE Check-In?
Around 15 Hmong and Laotian immigrants from Michigan walked into the Detroit ICE field office on the morning of July 30, 2025, for what they believed were standard annual appointments. All were taken into custody.
Michigan state Representative Mai Xiong, Michigan’s first Hmong American legislator, described those detained in a public statement:
“These individuals were born in refugee camps in Thailand and came to the U.S. legally as children of Hmong veterans who served alongside America during the Vietnam War and Secret War in Laos. They are fathers, sons, husbands, one is a wife and daughter, loyal employees, taxpayers, and members of our community. Some lack legal representation while others are unable to speak English fluently.”
Newsweek confirmed in the ICE detention database that Pang was held at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, after earlier transfers through facilities in Ohio and Texas. An ICE Detroit spokesperson confirmed every person arrested had a criminal record and a standing removal order. Detroit News later reported that every conviction among the group was at least two decades old.
The ICE/DHS press release named her as “Pang Ngia Hang, 53-year-old illegal alien, convicted for bank fraud,” placing her in the same document as convicted gang members and child sex offenders.
How Did Michigan Respond to the Hmong Detentions?
The community pushed back immediately and hard.
Scott launched a GoFundMe on August 7, seeking $7,500 for legal fees. In it, he wrote: “My wife Pang Nhia Hang-Bailey, she took my last name through marriage of twenty-six years. We met in 1995 and got married September 26, 1999.” He described her as “a taxpayer, a Christian, and a mother of 4 children that her and I raised,” noting that three of their kids had already graduated high school and the youngest would graduate in 2027. As of early 2026, the fund had raised $1,547 from 27 donors.
At the state level:
- 27 Michigan state legislators signed a letter to ICE Detroit field director Kevin Raycraft demanding immediate release
- Rep. Donavan McKinney stood before a crowd at a Detroit press conference and said: “It’s cruel, it’s wrong, it’s unjust, and it must end. We are calling for their release.”
- Rep. Mai Xiong held a press conference on the steps of the Michigan State Capitol on August 8
- Around 200 people attended a Detroit rally the following day
- Rep. Xiong introduced a Michigan legislative resolution demanding transparency from ICE
From the day Pang walked into the ICE office to the day she was on a military plane out of the country was 13 days. The legal and political momentum that communities were building had no time to become anything.
Where Is Pang Bailey Now?
Pang arrived in Vientiane on August 13, 2025. She left Laos as a one-year-old infant. She has no memory of it. She has no family there.
Deportees in her situation are held in a military compound upon arrival and cannot leave until they secure a local sponsor, typically a Laotian family member who can arrange housing and vouch for them. Pang had no one.
Christine Sauve of the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center confirmed to reporters that families had been told the deportees “made it to Laos safely, that they had been fed and they are being treated well.” A small nonprofit had formed in Laos to support Hmong deportees, though its resources were limited.
By late 2025, Pang had started a YouTube channel to document her daily life. She said finding steady work was difficult and that a lack of reliable transportation had cost her multiple job opportunities. Her four children remain in Warren with Scott, who is raising them on his own.
As of March 2026, she has been separated from her family for more than seven months.
Why Did One Michigan Hmong Man Come Home While Pang Did Not?
Lue Yang, 47, from St. Johns, Michigan, was detained in the same July 2025 sweep. His release in December 2025 shows exactly what legal doors were available to him that were never available to Pang.
Yang had a home invasion conviction from 1997, already expunged from Michigan’s public records under state law. His conviction was at the state level. That single fact determined the outcome.
- Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer pardoned Yang in October 2025
- Republican Representative Tom Barrett fought publicly and bipartisanly for his release
- Yang was freed on December 3, 2025
- On March 13, 2026, a Michigan judge formally vacated Yang’s original 1997 conviction
Pang Bailey’s bank fraud conviction was federal. A state governor has no authority to pardon a federal conviction. Only a presidential pardon could have provided relief, and no one in Washington pursued one for her. She was also deported within 13 days of her arrest, before the kind of sustained bipartisan pressure that took four months to secure Yang’s release had any chance to develop.
The difference between their two outcomes came down to one jurisdictional line: state court versus federal court.
Two Laws Moving in Opposite Directions Right Now
Two pieces of legislation are active in Washington at this moment, and both connect directly to Pang Bailey’s case.
Southeast Asian Deportation Relief Act of 2026
Reintroduced in February 2026 by Representatives Judy Chu, Pramila Jayapal, Zoe Lofgren, and Ayanna Pressley, and endorsed by over 100 organizations, this bill would:
- Stop deportations for Southeast Asian refugees who arrived in the US before 2008
- Create a formal return pathway for the 2,000+ people already removed to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam
- Allow those already deported to vacate their removal orders and fight their cases
- Replace mandatory in-person ICE check-ins with virtual check-ins every five years
Pang arrived in the US in 1978. She falls within the bill’s scope. If it passed, she would have a legal path back to Michigan.
The bill has no Republican co-sponsors. In a Republican-controlled Congress, it has no clear road to a vote.
Deporting Fraudsters Act, H.R. 1958
The House passed this bill on March 18, 2026, ten days ago, by a vote of 231 to 186. It would amend immigration law to make noncitizens deportable for convictions involving fraud against the US government, unlawful receipt of public benefits, and related financial offenses.
Bank fraud falls directly within its scope.
Michigan’s Democratic representatives voted against it. The bill now moves to the Senate.
If signed into law, it permanently writes into federal statute the exact basis used to deport Pang Bailey.
The Full Picture, March 28, 2026
Between January and October 2025, the Trump administration deported 175 people to Laos, more than any prior administration had sent there in a full fiscal year. ICE’s national detention population grew from 39,000 in January 2025 to over 72,000 by January 2026. Over 4,800 people considered Lao nationals by ICE currently live in the United States under removal orders.
The legal tools that brought Lue Yang home were not available to Pang. The bill that could open a path back for her has no Republican backing. The bill that would make her removal a permanent fixture of federal law passed the House ten days ago.
In Warren, Michigan, Scott Bailey is raising four children who have not seen their mother in person since July. In Vientiane, Pang Nhia Hang Bailey is still looking for work she cannot reach without transportation, living in a country she has no memory of, waiting for news from a family over 8,000 miles away.
She completed 18 annual check-ins across 18 years without missing one. Nobody told her the 18th would be the last.
