After overthrowing the Laotian monarchy, the Pathet Lao launched an aggressive campaign to capture or kill Hmong soldiers and families who sided with the CIA. 

Thousands of Hmong were evacuated or escaped on their own to Thailand. 

Thousands more who had already gone to live deep in the jungle were left to fend for themselves, which led to the creation of the Chao Fa and Neo Hom freedom fighters movements. 

Many men also took up arms again to protect their families as they crossed the heavily patrolled Mekong River to safety in Thailand.

Hmong began moving into refugee camps overseen by non-governmental organizations such as the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the International Rescue Committee, Refugees International ,and the Thai Ministry of the Interior. 

The first Hmong family to resettle in Minnesota arrived in November 1975. 

The largest wave came after the passage of the US Refugee Act of 1980.

In 2004, the Buddhist monastery at Wat Tham Krabok—the last temporary shelter for 15,000 Hmong remaining in Thailand—closed. 

This “last wave” came to the US, with as many as 5,000 settling in established Minnesota Hmong communities.

The 2010 census recorded more than 260,000 Hmong in the United States. 

More than 66,000 of that number lived in Minnesota, most of them in or near the Twin Cities—the largest urban population of Hmong in America.