Immigrant Family's Proud Republican Vote Met With 'Yellow Monkeys' Slur and Claim They Were Reported to ICE

A Vietnamese American woman who posted that her family had voted a straight Republican ticket was met with a racist reply calling them 'yellow monkeys' and claiming they had been reported to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Liliana Pham's post on X, in which she said her parents had nearly died escaping communism in Vietnam, had been viewed more than 1.5 million times at the time of writing.

One of the most visible replies came from an account that said it had reported the family to ICE. The exchange was later shared by a Chinese-language account on X.

Family Says It Voted Straight Republican

Pham wrote on the evening of Friday 23 October 2026, US Eastern time, that her family had 'just voted straight Republicans,' in a post on X.

She said the family had come to the United States from Vietnam ten years ago. 'My parents almost lost their lives trying to escape communism,' she wrote. 'That was their childhood. My childhood was being shoved with the idea that communism is the answer to everything.'

Pham said freedom of speech did not exist under a communist regime. 'If we have never experienced freedom, we would never know what it is,' she wrote. 'If people have never lost their freedom, they would never know what it feels like.'

'Now we have a chance to stand for what is right and preserve the values that built America,' she added.

She listed the reasons behind the family's votes. 'We are proud to vote for common sense, for strong border, school choice, for unborn babies, for preserving what God has intended,' she wrote.

Pham also backed Andy Biggs, the Republican congressman who won his party's nomination for governor of Arizona in July and is set to face Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs in November.

Biggs, a Trump ally and former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, comfortably beat fellow congressman David Schweikert in the primary. She wrote that Biggs 'will save Arizona from the liberal lunatics'. Her post ended with the words 'And for Charlie,' a reference she did not explain.

Racist Reply and ICE Claim

The post drew about 57,000 likes and almost 10,000 reposts, and more than 4,000 replies.

Among the replies displayed beneath the post was one from an account displaying the name Ken Platner and the handle @KenPlatner.

'I've already reported this to ICE,' the account wrote. 'The idea that a bunch of yellow monkeys could consider themselves American and have the right to vote, that's the most disgusting joke I've ever heard.'

At the time of writing, the reply had been viewed about 97,000 times and drawn more than 1,000 likes. IBTimes UK could not verify who runs the account, and found no evidence that any report had in fact been made to ICE.

Only US citizens are eligible to vote in federal elections, and federal authorities can investigate suspected immigration violations and unlawful voting by non-citizens. Pham's post did not set out her relatives' citizenship, and nothing in the material reviewed by IBTimes UK indicates that any family member voted illegally.

Other replies criticised the family's politics without using racist language. Cyrus Janssen, posting as @thecyrusjanssen, wrote that it was 'sad to see immigrants to the United States fall victim to the propaganda and literally vote against their own interests'. He argued that communism posed 'zero threat to the United States'.

Another user, posting as Jules23, wrote: 'So you had the chance to live in an actual democracy and you chose fascism.'

Exchange Reaches Chinese-Language Users

The exchange reached a wider audience after a Chinese-language account, posting as @chinese_voice_, shared screenshots of it a few hours later. That post had been viewed more than 190,000 times and liked about 1,300 times.

The account summarised the episode in Chinese. It said several Vietnamese Americans had posted after voting for Trump's Republicans, describing their votes as being for 'common sense, border management, school choice, unborn babies and upholding God's will.'

The reply it quoted matches the one posted beneath Pham's post. The account quoted the reply about reporting the family to ICE, rendering the slur as 'yellow-skinned monkeys.'

Vietnamese Americans are among the most Republican-leaning Asian American groups. A 2024 Pew Research Center analysis found that 51 per cent of Vietnamese American registered voters identify with or lean towards the Republican Party, against 42 per cent who identify with or lean towards the Democrats.

Pew said more than two million Vietnamese Americans lived in the United States as of 2022, about eight per cent of the country's Asian American population. Roughly 60 per cent were born abroad.

Many older Vietnamese Americans arrived as refugees after the fall of Saigon in 1975, and anti-communism has long shaped the community's politics.

Pham's family, by her own account, arrived far more recently, but her post drew directly on that history, framing her family's vote as a defence of the freedoms her parents had crossed the world to find.