Anh (left) and Jade (right) during their afternoon Wednesday shift at the 328 W Chelten eatery. (Photo: Rasheed Z. Ajamu)

Germantown neighbors were shocked to see an ask from what they consider a pillar of the community on Tuesday morning while scrolling Facebook.

“Save our dad from deportation” in big bold black letters with a photo of Das Good Cafe co-owner, Anou Vongbandith.

Anou is the owner of the not-even-year-old Das Good Cafe, which opened at the end of 2024 on W. Chelten Avenue, alongside his wife Anh. The two share an over-25-year-old love story that visitors get to feel a small bit of through their cuisine that blends tastes from Asia and Hawaii, representing both of their cultures.

But no great love story ever told existed without conflict. And for the Vongbandiths, this is yet another saga to a lesser-known part of their romantic lore.

On Saturday morning, July 28, Anh says that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) showed up to take Anou into detainment.

“We were coming out of our house to go to work,” Anh shared.

While Anou, 50, has been in the country since he was about five years old, he’s never gained citizenship status. He was born in Laos. In fact, he’s been living with a final deportation order hanging over his head since about 2010, after his first bout with ICE.

Many people who fled to the U.S. from Vietnam and Laos during or after the war in Vietnam have been allowed to stay, even if they’ve been ordered to leave the U.S. He’s gotten by on that loophole after being sent home just weeks after receiving deportation status.

However, he’s been under supervision, checking in twice a year, since then for the past 15-16 years.

But recent political and legal changes have led Laos to begin cooperating more. There has also been an increased number of deportations of Southeast Asians since late 2023, and they are also four times more likely to be deported due to previous criminal convictions than any other immigrant group.

If deported, Anh says Anou would face several challenges.

“He doesn’t even know the language,” she said. “He does have a few uncles, but he doesn’t exactly know them. He doesn’t know anything about the country.”

Most people deported after a long time of U.S. residency face many difficulties.

Like Anh stated, some don’t speak the language or have stable familial support, while others may even face stigma and isolation due to difficulty adjusting.

The 2020 Hmong and Lao Refugee Deportation Prohibition Act states that deporting refugees who helped the U.S. during the Vietnam War hurts families and causes suffering. It describes these deportations as “cruelly inflicting trauma and harm” on communities that have been in the U.S. for a long time.

And for Anou, who has a heart that only pumps at 27% of what it should and is twice as big as normal size since a bout with COVID-19, the risk of deportation is even greater. With costs over $1,600 a month for medications, Anh says it’ll be much more difficult and costly to have medications shipped to Laos if her husband is deported.

Right now, Anou is also without one of his most important heart medications while in detention.

And while Anh says many people have asked why Anou hasn’t gotten citizenship yet, she says it’s not that simple. And because of the nature of Anou’s case, she says he’s left in legal limbo.

According to Anh, lawyers have been saying they can’t take on the case because he’s already had a final order for deportation. 

But there’s another piece that further complicates the situation: The severity of the plea deal that Anou took a few years before he was marked for deportation.

It’s the same plea deal that originally stripped the Das Good owner of his green card, which now looms over the family the most.

While GIH is not certain of the full scope of charges, Anh did share that during their time living in Lake County, Florida, Anou pleaded guilty to charges associated with allegations involving sexual misconduct by them exercised onto their children.

The allegation came after the couple learned Anh’s then-15-year-old daughter was in a romantic relationship with a 21-year-old. When Anh threatened to have the man arrested for statutory rape, Anh says the guy’s parents flipped the script and took their daughter to a precinct that they say was manipulated to create and share the allegation with police.

This case sent the Vongbandiths into a financial crisis, but also an 18-month-long separation from their kids, who were removed from their home because of allegations.

Under a combination of stress, wanting to have their family reunited, and the guidance of his legal representation, Anou pled guilty to the charges. Anh was also charged, but she pled no contest, which she says was a move to strictly get her children back, though lawyers told her after that it hurt her husband’s case. 

She says their representation presented Anou with a plea option or said they could appeal. But, she says, the lawyer said he’d still have been in jail for between six months and two years if he had appealed.

Anh also says a major guiding factor was that the town they were in was predominantly white, with extreme bias against people of color. She says attorneys assured them this case would have gone in front of a jury, and if her daughter, Anou’s stepdaughter, cried – for any reason – Anou would have surely been sent to jail.

“They said this is your best bet,” Anh recalled the attorney saying. “Take the plea, you do a couple of classes, you do probation, then you get your life back and start all over like it’s never happened.”

But, she says, they never mentioned or explained to them that ICE would pick him up because a felony case violates immigration laws. So when Anou was completing everything he needed to do to restart his life, she says that’s when he first got picked up years ago.

Though the Vongbandiths have done everything they can to rebuild and renew, their past, which they’ve worked hard to keep in the past, has crept in just like that to threaten their lives once again.

And while she hasn’t been finding much help or answers from attorneys, Anh has found one possible saving grace. 

“You know what the Padilla motion is?” she asked.

The Padilla motion, derived from Padilla v. Kentucky, is a 2010 Supreme Court decision that required lawyers to inform non-citizen clients that pleading guilty could lead to deportation. 

It made it clear that deportation isn’t just a side effect; it’s an integral part of the punishment for some crimes. So, lawyers need to give the right advice about it.

Because Anh says their defense never went over those options, they hope to see if they can reopen his case and have it vacated.

Jade Vongbandith, their younger daughter, was six years old when allegations about her parents happened. Though she was young, she remembers the ordeal and the turmoil it caused the family.

She confidently addressed the allegation and called it a lie.

“It’s something I obviously never wanna talk to anyone about,” Jade told GIH. “So for this to come out again, it just sucks.”

Anh also says her eldest daughter, now around 35, has also been clear that the allegations weren’t factual and that she’s tried to make it right. However, when she did visit the courthouse to speak with prosecutors, Anh claims the prosecutors told her daughter that she’d go to jail and be separated from her child, whom she was pregnant with at that time.

Jade, now 26, is Anh and Anou’s younger daughter who set up the GoFundMe that neighbors saw on Tuesday morning.

“I remember the financial strain it took before,” Jade said. “Even though we have these businesses, it’s not like we have all this money to put out to lawyers and whatever we need to help this case.”

That same financial strain is what landed them in Philadelphia many years ago when they had to sleep in Anou’s mother’s basement to rebuild their lives.

The couple is noted for their generous spirit, not only in the neighborhood, but in the city, and it’s reflected in the ways people have contributed to the family’s fund. When some neighbors saw it, they had emotional reactions.

Crystal Jackson, of Perfectly Flawless, was at the eatery on Sunday, unaware of the family’s struggles. So, on Tuesday, when she saw the post in the Living in Germantown Facebook group, she was in disbelief.

Jackson says that Anh and Anou’s grace and giving nature show not only in their restaurant, but outside as well. She tells the family to “keep the faith” and know that the community is behind them.

For Anh, generosity isn’t just transactional, it’s a way of life.

Tearfully, she recalls her early years in Hawaii, where she says she grew up really poor, often foraging for food, asking for spare resources, and even eating mongoose, which, recalling, helped transform her tears into a chuckle when she leaned in and said, “People are like… what is that?!”

She says her husband’s upbringing wasn’t any better, being raised by grandparents, who she says he recalls not having the best positioning towards him.

“It made an impact on him of what he felt about how hard life can be, that whenever somebody, you know, has a story, he’ll do whatever it takes, get a shirt off his back if he has to. And because you never know, you know, you never, never know. And that’s our story. Or should I say soul?” Anh said.

While Jade lives in Virginia, she has felt the love from the community and says it’s clear that her father and mother have truly embedded themselves within a community that they love and loves them back.

“I’m just really grateful,” she said. “I don’t even care about the money, you know? I just want this story out because someone could be going through something similar.”

She also adds that this story serves as an example of how it’s much easier to tell people to get citizenship and much harder to see the realities and barriers placed in obtaining it.

The family’s newest GoFundMe update outlines next steps, including seeking a stay on the deportation, possibly on compassionate or humanitarian grounds.

While Anh says it’s been an exhausting fight, she’ll never give up on it – or Anou.

While the Germantown Info Hub asked about reaching out to Anh’s daughter, we respected that the information that the family has brought to light is sensitive and is currently causing issues within their family. Because of that, we have also omitted Anh’s daughter’s name to keep folks from contacting her. Anh has also made it clear she places no blame on her daughter for a decision she made as a child.