Marshall man claims ICE detained him for protests over police killings
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When 33 year-old Aditya Harsono went to work as usual in late March, he didn’t know that he would be getting arrested by federal authorities.
“They just put handcuffs on me, saying that ‘You’re under arrest,’” the Marshall man told MPR News over the phone from the Kandiyohi County Jail. “I was like, ‘OK, but can you tell me why?’ They say, ‘Yeah, your visa got revoked.’”
Through the confusion, Harsono started piecing together what happened. On March 23, his F-1 student visa was revoked. Then, the “respondent was taken into ICE custody while at work, allegedly for overstaying his student visa following its revocation on March 23, 2025,” the immigration court documents state.
Now, Harsono’s facing potential deportation despite having a valid F-1 visa that wasn’t expiring until June 2026. He also had pending applications for permanent residency based on his marriage to a U.S. citizen. He’s still in custody at the Kandiyohi County Jail.
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“It’s hard because the fact that people, including me, complying with everything to be legal in the United States, we pay taxes and all that stuff, following the paperwork renewing process and for some reason, they still have the power to do whatever they think that these people jeopardize or harm community,” Harsono said. “I think that’s really unfair. I just want to be back with my family.”
Attorney Sarah Gad, who represents Harsono, received a phone call from Harsono’s wife Peyton who she said was “hysterical.”
“She had just gotten a phone call from human resources at the hospital where Aditya worked, saying ICE showed up and took him into custody,” Gadsaid. “She didn’t know why. None of us knew why. We couldn’t even fathom. ‘Was this a mistake?’ There’s nothing in his record that would make him removable or inadmissible.”
Harsono has a misdemeanor conviction for criminal damage to property in 2022. But it’s for another reason that he believes he was detained by ICE — Harsono was arrested for unlawful assembly at a 2021 protest for the killing of Daunte Wright during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center on April 11, 2021. The charge against Harsono was later dismissed.
An immigration judge granted Harsono a $5,000 bond in his current case, but ICE appealed, leading to a stay. Gad said she believes that her client’s detainment may be politically motivated. She noted the dismissed protest charge was cited in the memo to oppose bond.
“I am satisfied that the evidentiary record supports the contentions justifying the continued detention of the noncitizen,” said Jim Stolley, chief counsel of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a bond notice appeal.
“The legal arguments are warranted by existing law or by a non-frivolous argument for the extension, modification, or reversal of existing precedent or the establishment of new precedent.”
Gad worries about the growing pattern of arresting international students and revoking their visa statuses based on their participation in campus protests. In Harsono’s case, Gad said the federal government’s prioritization of political protests over misdemeanor convictions sends a specific message.
“In all honesty, I think that they put that first to frame him in a way that suggests that he’s a threat to the current administration’s national security interests,” Gad said.
‘Eventually, it will be over’
Harsono came to the United States from Indonesia in 2015 as an undergraduate student at Southwest Minnesota State University, where he eventually graduated with his Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science and ended up working in Minneapolis. Though he had still wanted to pursue a master’s degree, he returned to Indonesia in 2021, after the charges against him relating to his protest participation were dropped.
“After that arrest, I left for Indonesia, and said, ‘Let’s see if I can actually get it, obtain my visa again,’” he said.
To Harsono’s surprise, he was able to obtain a visa again a few months later in 2021 and was allowed back in the U.S. He graduated with his master’s degree in 2023. While studying in the program, he met his wife, Peyton Harsono, and the two married. They have an infant daughter, Adalet.
Last June, the couple filed for a petition to sponsor Harsono as an immediate relative to receive a green card through marriage. Attorney Sarah Gad said her firm was contacted again in December 2024 by the Harsonos to obtain a work permit because Aditya Harsono’s would expire by the end of January.
“We opted to just file the I-485 application to adjust his status to a lawful permanent resident so that he could get his work permit based on that application,” Gad said. “So, just by virtue of being married to the U.S. citizen, having been lawfully admitted and having these pending applications, that automatically puts him in a period of authorized stay.”
Harsono’s loved ones are fighting for his release. Peyton Harsono wrote to ICE, pleading with the agency to consider the impacts of her husband’s detainment.
“My husband is not a threat to society—he is a devoted father, a hardworking man, and the foundation of our family,” she said in a letter filed with court documents. “His continued detainment is unjust and serves no benefit other than to tear apart a loving and law-abiding family. We need him home. There’s been so much unrepairable damage and emotional trauma. Please, I beg you! Give me my husband, my daughter’s father back. We need him home.”
Gad also said they planned to ask Gov. Tim Walz to pardon Harsono, but it’s unclear whether Walz has the authority to pardon those who are in custody of federal immigration authorities.
Throughout his detainment, Aditya Harsono said he remembered being shackled and handcuffed. He was interrogated by ICE agents and transported in cramped vans. He did see other international students who were detained and for a brief moment found some comfort amidst fear.
“I wasn’t the only one, I wasn’t alone,” he said. “We kind of prayed for each other. To keep us stronger. Because, none of us knew, and none of us deserved this.”
“They still wanna put me in jail for cases (that are) already closed, and it’s not fair,” he added. “It’s like buying a ticket to the cinema, and you sit down to have popcorn, to watch the movie, and someone comes up to me, ‘Hey, your tickets are invalid, and you gotta leave the theater right now.’ It’s very corrupt and unfair.”
But the only thing Aditya wants is to go home — back to his family.
“Just stay strong, Dada will be home,” he said. “Everything happens for a reason. Somehow we're going to be stronger than ever. This is all a test. Stay positive. I'm trying to keep my head up all the time, and I want all of them to do the same. Eventually it will be over.”
Correction (April 15, 2025): An earlier version of this story misstated when the Harsonos contacted attorney Sarah Gad a second time. The story has been updated.
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