Just over one month later, ICE arrested her husband, and he now faces the very real possibility of being deported.
Lan Thach’s husband, Dung “Yo” Thach, a popular cyclist in the North Texas BMX and mountain biking community who has been in the United States since 1980, was detained by immigration authorities on July 11 when he went to a local immigration office to renew his residency documents. He now faces deportation.
Local cyclists familiar with Yo Thach, a former BMX racer on the national scene, have responded with shock. “When somebody called me and told me Yo has been detained, I thought it was a joke,” said Todd Slavik, a former national champion BMX racer from Fort Worth who calls Thach one of his closest friends. “He’s been here since he was 3 years old. How is he not a citizen?”
In fact, after Thach, his mother and a sibling fled Vietnam after his father’s death, the United States admitted them as asylum seekers and granted them green cards as permanent residents. But while other family members eventually became citizens, Thach never completed the process. Over the years, he married and had children. He also kept racing BMX, competing as a professional at the national level in the 30-and-over class. Today, he co-owns a Grand Prairie sign business with his brother and rides recreationally.
Thach’s trouble began nearly 20 years ago. In 2006, according to Texas Department of Public Safety records, he was arrested by Fort Worth Police and charged with felony controlled-substance possession. After conviction, he was sentenced to two years in prison.
Thach served his time and has avoided arrest since. However, as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants, Thach was identified as a candidate for deportation and detained when he appeared at the immigration office. ICE representatives did not respond to requests for information, but Thach is reportedly now at the Bluebonnet Detention Center near Abilene.
In addition to staying out of legal trouble, Thach has become a valued member of the local biking scene. Friends describe him as always willing to help new riders set up their bikes or polish their skills. “I don’t think anybody out there would have a negative thing to say about him,” said Hurst real estate agent and longtime racing colleague Jeff Luna. “He is just a good dude.”
Despite Thach’s friends’ disbelief, it is not unusual for immigrants with old criminal records to be detained when they interact with the criminal justice system, leave the country or show up at an immigration office, according to Denise Gilman, co-director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School in Austin. “It seems surprising, but immigration law has always been quite harsh against those who have any kind of criminal record at all,” Gilman said.
For Thach’s family, the news that he may be deported has landed hard. His wife has kept people in the loop through publicly available posts on several social media cycling groups, writing in one, “This is an incredibly difficult time for our family, especially for our children Angelica, Hayden and Julian, who miss their father terribly.”
Since Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration, news of the president's supporters being detained by ICE or deported has been somewhat regular across the country. On Facebook and Instagram, Thach presents a fun-loving, active life with friends, family, a love of motocross and the outdoors. But on X, his posts take a tone similar to his wife’s X account.
Mixed in with motocross and BMX video clips are racist and anti-trans videos and memes. His X timeline isn't as active as his wife’s, nor is it as Trump-intensive, but the irony of a man behind a right-leaning social media account facing deportation under Trump is striking. After initially declining to speak to the Observer about her husband's detainment for this article, we reached back out to Lan Thach to ask if her views on ICE or Trump have changed since her husband was arrested, but did not receive a response.
In a Facebook post, Lan Thach appealed for people who knew her husband to send her notarized letters attesting to his character and contributions. She planned to include them in a packet her attorney would submit to the immigration court seeking to stop the deportation and obtain his release.“If he’s been in the U.S. for a significant period of time and has a lot of factors in his favor, the immigration judge would more likely than not approve the application.” - immigration attorney Lauren Wallis
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Character references, along with having family members who would be affected by his deportation, could help Thach when he gets in front of an immigration judge, according to immigration lawyers. “If he does qualify under the law for relief from deportation, community support can absolutely be critical, because in the end it’s a decision by the court,” Gilman said.
Strictly by the immigration statute, a drug crime does trigger deportation, according to Lauren Wallis, an immigration attorney in Fort Worth. Furthermore, an immigrant with a drug conviction is not eligible to get out of detention until the case is heard, she said. That may not happen for a few months.
Without knowing the full details of Thach’s original conviction, Wallis said she can’t be sure, but in the right circumstances, the long-term prognosis is usually positive. “If he’s been in the U.S. for a significant period of time and has a lot of factors in his favor, the immigration judge would more likely than not approve the application,” she said.
Meanwhile, public pressure may help, especially at the local level, according to immigration law practitioners. This is despite the current federal policy of deporting as many people as possible as quickly as possible. David Hernandez, a researcher specializing in immigration policy at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, said cases like Thach’s can generate pressure by highlighting the human stories behind the numbers and bringing home the consequences of the policy.
“This is one man’s deportation case,” Hernandez said. “But it’s larger in scale. There are loved ones. There’s a business. There’s the biker community. It’s not just one man.”
Looming over Thach’s case is the fact that people all over are having similar ICE experiences. Even with the black mark on his record and the tough stance encouraged by immigration law, Thach wouldn’t have had nearly as much trouble before the current administration in Washington set its sights on deporting millions of immigrants, said Rebekah Wolf, New York-based director of the Immigration Justice Campaign at the American Immigration Council, a referral service connecting immigration attorneys with people who need their services.
Wolf pointed to a recent federal policy shift to mandating long-term detention for many more people accused of immigration violations. Before the shift that began this year, she said, “This would have been a no-brainer case. We would have gotten this person out of detention in 10 days.”
Wolf also noted that, according to data ICE releases every other week, most detainees are not dangerous felons like the ones publicized on its government website. “They say they’re going after violent criminals and people who harm American citizens,” Wolf said. “But their own data shows that’s not actually who’s being arrested.”
Wolf said the situation highlights the way immigration policy harms native-born Americans like Thach’s wife and children. “They’re being presented with a terrible option,” she said. “Do you all pick up and move to Vietnam? Or do you stay separated?”
For now, Thach’s family and friends aren’t looking that far in the future. Instead, they’re trying to ensure it doesn’t come to that. “I’m doing everything that I can that they allow me to do,” Lan Thach said in her post thanking supporters. “I’m fighting like hell to get him back where he belongs.”
Lan Thach’s most recent X post, made almost three weeks before her husband was taken by ICE, is a repost from the official GOP account. Along with a black and white image of a serious President Trump, the post reads in all caps, “PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH.”
