By Ben Warren, The Detroit News

More than a dozen Hmong and Laotian Americans living in the Detroit area received a letter summoning them to the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office on July 30.

Many thought it was a request for a routine check-in. It wasn’t, their families say.

Instead, the individuals were taken into ICE custody and have been detained ever since in northern Michigan, Texas and Louisiana. They are awaiting deportation to Laos, a country where the Hmong refugees have never set foot, but which U.S. officials say has agreed to take some detainees.

The Hmong individuals detained came to the U.S. as refugees in the 1970s and 1980s, most from refugee camps in Thailand. ICE says all have criminal records and removal orders, but families, local elected offic

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