Oudone Lothirath was just a child when he arrived in the United States as a Laotian refugee in the early 1980s, in search of a better life.

But some 45 years later, while he was supposed to be undergoing life-extending chemotherapy for his terminal Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Lothirath found himself languishing in a federal immigration detention facility.

This is an American. I don’t care what paperwork he has–he has spent effectively his whole life here and he is as much one of us as anybody else.

Not that this would be okay if he weren’t an American, but ffs, take care of our own, is it? This is just another child failed by the United States, even if they took their time about getting around to ruining his life.