SEATTLE — Weeks after a federal judge ordered Melissa Tran released from the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, the United States deported her to Vietnam — the country she left as a child.

Melissa Tran’s attorney, Jennie Pasquarella of the Seattle Clemency Project, confirmed that Vietnam approved ICE’s request for travel documents and issued Tran a passport. ICE carried out the removal this week.

“I’m just heartbroken it ended this way,” Pasquarella said.

Tran had spent five months in immigration detention before Pasquarella filed a federal petition arguing she was being held without legal justification. The centuries-old legal tool called habeaus corpus, allows detainees to ask a judge to review whether their confinement is lawful.

After her release in October, Tran returned t

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