Ma Yang

A conviction for Marijuana trafficking in 2020 has lead to one Ma Yang, a 37 year old mother of five, being deported to Laos.

It's hard not to note that while marijuana trafficking is illegal, hardly any state in the US cares about growing, selling, and using it now.

She came here from  Thailand in 1988 when she wasn't even a year old.  She's Hmong.  Raised in the US, she doesn't speak an Indochinese language.  Her arrest and conviction involved twenty-five other people (probably all Hmong, I'd guess) and she plead guilty and served thirty months in jail.

She shouldn't have done that, but then, the pressure to be involved, which doesn't excuse it, may have been pretty high.  Apparently everyone involved lived in the same building.

In jail her green card was revoked and she signed a deportation order, believing, naively that she wouldn't be deported as her folks were from Laos, which doesn't cooperate with the US on such matters.

Well, they did here.  She's been in Laos since March, where she doesn't speak the language, and can't get insulin or blood pressure medicine.  Getting a job isn't going to be easy.

What's the lesson here?

Well, some would say if you can't do the time, don't do the crime, although she did the time.  

Some might say she got bad legal advice.  Maybe.  

Some would say that this is really inhumane.  Given her condition, she's likely to suffer for her crime with death, in short order.