Melissa’s teenage son hoisted a laptop above his head as his mother appeared on screen by video call from a detention facility in Spokane, Washington.

At the first sight of their friend in weeks, a crowd of around 150 people, who had gathered for a rally outside Melissa’s Hagerstown nail salon, erupted in gasps, cries and applause. Her family members wept and held each other.

The 43-year-old is fighting deportation to Vietnam, a place she last lived when she was 10.

Melissa made a request: “Please give me your prayers.”

Mong Tuyen Thi Tran, known as Melissa in her adopted Western Maryland hometown, has been in the custody of federal immigration officials since May 12.

She arrived in the U.S. legally in 1993, fleeing a country reeling from the ravages of the Vietnam War and the regime that followed.

But when she was 19 and residing in Virginia on a green card, Tran stole over $10,000 from her employer, a doctor, her attorney Laura Kelsey Rhodes said. Tran pleaded guilty to felony theft charges, was ordered to serve four months in jail and paid full restitution.

She also was issued a deportation order, but the government allowed her to remain in the U.S. as long as she reported regularly to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, typically every three to 12 months, Rhodes said.

More than two decades later, amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration, Tran was arrested during one of those routine ICE appointments in Baltimore. Rhodes expects the ensuing legal fight to bring Tran home to Hagerstown could take months.

“It is a jarring aspect of the law that we can come back years later and say, ‘Oh, actually, we do want to deport you for this now,’” the attorney said.

Tran’s detention has plunged her family, including her husband, Dung “Danny” Nguyen Hoang, and their four American-born children, ages 6-19, into weeks of uncertainty, fear and anguish. As Tran was shuttled to federal facilities around the country, she missed out on her kids’ graduations, proms and field days.

The arrest has also shaken Tran’s community in north Hagerstown, where the Vietnamese couple whom locals call Melissa and Danny moved on from the past and built a life over the past 22 years.

Her supporters believe Tran served her punishment and made the most of her second chance, becoming a devoted swim mom, co-owner of a local nail salon and community fixture.

They say Tran doesn’t fit the profile of the criminals they thought Trump’s deportation campaign would target.

“There’s just no way someone like Melissa should be taken from her kids,” her close friend and neighbor Lara Shepherd said.

‘She should have been there’

The morning after Mother’s Day, Tran’s 18-year-old daughter, Rachel Hoang, was running an errand at the post office when she received a call from her father, urging her to come home.

As she walked in, Rachel heard her dad speaking frantically in Vietnamese to relatives on the phone. He gathered Rachel and her 19-year-old brother, Jackson, and delivered the news: Their mother had been detained by ICE officials in Baltimore.

Until that moment, the kids knew only scant details of their mother’s immigration journey. They were unaware that she regularly checked in with ICE, or that decisions from her distant past continued to follow her.

“I was having a hard time processing what he said,” Jackson said. “It didn’t really occur to me that something like that could have happened.”

An ICE spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Jackson and his father drove to Baltimore to retrieve Tran’s car. When they arrived at ICE’s downtown field office, they asked to see Tran but were denied, they said. Instead, an officer delivered her keys and a note addressed to Jackson and Rachel.

Tran wrote to tell her children she loved them and was proud of them. And that she was sorry she wouldn’t be there for some big moments to come.

The children were used to their mom being present for everything: book fairs, after-school pick ups, Valentine’s Day parties. She cheered them on at swim meets. She sat by Rachel’s bedside through a number of hospitalizations the last few years. She took her younger children, 10-year-old Jacob and 6-year-old Riley, on trips to Legoland, Disney World and Hershey Park.

Rachel, especially, felt her mom’s absence at a number of recent milestones. Last month, she attended her senior prom and earned both a high school diploma and an associate’s degree through a dual enrollment program.

At her graduation ceremony, Rachel listened as student speakers thanked their parents for their support. It brought up memories of her mom. “I just thought, she should have been there,” Rachel said.

Jackson and Rachel have resolved to keep things as normal as possible for their younger siblings, who have struggled to make sense of what happened to their mother.

Just as their mother might, the two older children are juggling work with caring for Jacob and Riley, helping them with their homework, putting them to bed, preparing their meals and taking them to their swim classes.

“We just try our best to keep them distracted, make them happy and make sure that they’re still getting the life that she would want for them,” Jackson said.

Tran tries to call her kids from the detention facility every day after school. To help cover the costs, as well as fund her mother’s legal fees and commissary, Rachel has been running a bake sale, selling homemade macarons, chocolate chip cookies and intricately piped cakes over Instagram.

Danny Hoang, meanwhile, has been trying to keep afloat the nail salon he and his wife have run for 22 years.

“The kids need Melissa home,” he said.

A life in Hagerstown

Tran met Hoang while working together at a nail salon in Waldorf, soon after the legal trouble she experienced as a teenager.

Both Vietnamese immigrants, they married and moved to Hagerstown, where they started anew and opened a business of their own: Nail Palace and Spa, nestled in a Potomac Avenue shopping center. Soon, they purchased a home in a predominantly white neighborhood on the city’s north end.

They raised their four children on a quiet, residential street lined with single-family homes. The kids said Tran taught herself woodworking, then remodeled the kitchen, built the fireplace and finished the basement to create a playroom for them. Their parents filled the backyard with flowers: pink, purple and yellow roses, daisies and black-eyed Susans.

At the salon, Tran managed the finances while also working as a nail technician. In between customers, she’d slip to a back room to help her kids with their homework.

Tran and Hoang developed a loyal clientele who said they admired the couple’s work ethic, devotion to their children and personal touch. Several clients turned into friends.

“If you’ve ever had the privilege to step into their shop, you are instantly family,” said Tina Nash, a close friend.

Over the last few weeks, word of Tran’s arrest has spread through the community, where locals harbor a range of views on the roiling debate over immigration.

Many here don’t see Tran’s situation as a political or legal matter, but rather as an injustice against one of their own. They’ve written letters to Trump officials, rallied outside her nail salon and launched a GoFundMe, which has raised over $9,000 to help cover Tran’s legal expenses.

Debra Valentine, a client and friend, said she sees flaws in the nation’s immigration system. She believes some people have taken advantage of the country’s open borders and should be deported.

“Melissa, in my opinion, doesn’t fall under that,” Valentine said.

Many residents said they didn’t expect the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign to hit their community. And they never expected it would sweep up Tran.

“She made a mistake, and she paid for that mistake,” said Lucy Linn, a friend and the kids’ former kindergarten teacher. “That is the past.”

The family says it has felt the community’s support. Clients have stopped by the salon to hug Hoang and ask about Tran. Even strangers have offered their sympathy or purchased goods from Rachel’s bake sale.

About a week ago, Hoang and the kids were able to have their first video call with Tran since her arrest.

Jackson and Rachel said they were grateful to see their mother’s face, but also worried that she was losing weight and struggling to sleep.

“It was really rough,” Rachel said. “I was just like, this might be how I’m able to see her for the rest of my life.”

Friends and family say Tran keeps herself occupied by visiting the detention facility’s law library and taking advantage of the hour she’s permitted outside each day.

The support she’s received in Hagerstown has given her hope, her children say. She watched much of the Wednesday rally via video link, looking out at a swell of supporters wearing neon pink shirts and bracelets bearing her name.

As tears streamed down her face, the crowd started a chant: “Bring Melissa home.”