Recent videos on social media show immigration agents detaining people in Aditya Halson without disturbing them. However, he said he presumed that the media was probably exaggerating the extent of the Trump administration's actions.
However, his understanding shifted to late March, when a hospital supervisor who worked in Minnesota summoned him downstairs, and two federal agents handcuffed him.
“It all shattered,” Halson said. He learned that he received a Master's degree in Business Administration and then allowed him to stay at work for a year. Halsono, who married an American citizen and applied for a green card, has since been held in the county jail and faced deportation.
Those affected include students involved in activism in the war in Gaza that the Trump administration characterized as destructive. Others, including Halsono, appear to have lost their visas as a result of criminal convictions, but in some cases due to relatively minor crimes.
Most students who are detained talk publicly about their situation. But in a phone interview from the prison, Harsono, 34, explained in a phone interview from the prison where he has been held for weeks, the shock of his arrest and how his visa lapse overturned his family. And his wife, Payton Halson, spoke about the difficulties she is caring for her now eight-month-old daughter, Addaley, while working as a social worker at a drug treatment center.
Ms. Halson, a Minnesota native, said her family lost the health insurance that Halsono took on the job as the hospital's supply chain manager. As their savings drop, 24-year-old Halsono has pleaded for help on a fundraising site, calling “the trauma of this separation can't stand it.”
The State Department declined to answer questions about Halson's case. “The State Department will continue to work closely with the Department of Homeland Security to enforce zero tolerance for US aliens in violation of US law, threaten public safety, or in other circumstances where it is guaranteed.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently said the government has invalidated visas for students involved in destructive forms of activities, including vandalism. “When we identify these crazy people, we take away their student visa,” Rubio said. “No one qualifies for a student visa.”
After moving to the US in 2015, Halsono received his bachelor's degree in environmental science from Southwestern Minnesota University, attending on a scholarship funded by the Indonesian government. During his years in the US, Halsono said he pursued his passion for hip-hop by recording music, reading history books and sometimes taking part in peaceful protests against police misconduct.
He enrolled in the school's MBA program in 2022 and met Mr. Halson in the housing complex where they lived.
She was hit quickly, she said, “When you know, you know.”
In July 2022, Halsono was indicted for destroying property, depicting graffiti on four trailers belonging to a food company.
The cost of repairs for the damage is less than $500, according to court documents. Halsono pleaded guilty to the misdestruction of his property and agreed to pay $485, including fines and court fees, records show.
Speaking over the phone from the Kandiyohi County Jail, about 95 miles west of Minneapolis, Halsono said he repented of what he had done. He said he loved painting murals and had a lifelong passion for street art, falsely speculating that the trailer had been abandoned.
The couple got married in the fall of 2023. The following year they applied for Mr. Halson's green card, quickly settling in their daily lives, juggling parent-child relationships and new job demands. Money is tough. Sleep was rare. But they said everything seemed to be on track until Halson was arrested at the hospital on March 27th.
At the request of a Department of Homeland Security official, the Department revoked its visa at the request of a Department of Homeland Security official, according to a March 23 memo signed by career diplomat John Armstrong. The 2022 property damage arrest said Halsono showed “currently poses a threat to the public safety of the United States.”
Armstrong wrote that the State Department would not notify Halson of the lapse before agents cited “operational security” of immigration and customs enforcement before they could detain him.
The day after his arrest, the Department of Homeland Security said that Halsono was subject to deportation as he remained in the United States after his visa was revoked a few days ago, and the Department of Homeland Security issued a document setting for the campaign deportation proceedings.
Halsono said the immigration officer who took him to prison asked at one point that someone from Indonesia, the archipelago famous for its beach, was rolled up in Minnesota, a place in a merciless winter. The agent's hilarious conversations have been exacerbated over weeks in a prison that houses 16 people, and are clearly at odds with his mood.
“I had no fresh air or sunlight,” he said last week.
During his stay in custody, Mr. Halson said he recalled why he chose to study in the United States. He said he saw it as a country that values ​​multiculturalism and freedom of speech.
Halsono said he feels the country has changed in an important and ominous way. Even if he ultimately got the green card, Halsono said he questioned whether he was safe here and home. “America is no longer a democracy,” he said.
He said he was despaired at the idea that if he was deported, his wife and daughter might be banned from visiting a country where they would call their home. He said he began to consider how his wife and daughter would be fare if they all moved to Indonesia.
In just a few weeks, Halson said her husband missed out on several milestones for her baby daughter. Adderett began sitting on his father's walker and unassisted to say the word “dada” for the first time when his father called out from prison.
“She's getting bigger,” she said.
At a court hearing on April 10, the immigration judge ruled that Halsono could be released on bonds, citing green card eligibility, according to lawyer Sarah Gado. However, Halson remains in custody as the government blocked his release while suing the sentence.
In addition to Graffiti's arrest, Gadd said government lawyers said Harsono was arrested in 2021 during demonstrations against police violence in court. Prosecutors dismissed the charges he faced. This is a misdemeanor for violating a curfew, the lawyer added.
Halson said she struggles to reflect on what would happen if her husband was eventually deported. I feel unbearable to live without him. And she said she couldn't imagine moving to Indonesia as she had never traveled abroad.
“I rarely went out of state,” she said. “The farthest thing I go to is South Dakota.”
Alain Delacheriere Contributed research.
