Minnesota Man Aditya Harsono Whose Student Visa Was Revoked Talks About Detainment

Recent videos on social media showing immigration agents taking people into custody unnerved Aditya Harsono, who had himself come to this country from Indonesia on a student visa. But he said he presumed that the media was probably exaggerating the extent of the Trump administration’s actions.

His understanding shifted in late March, though, when a supervisor at the hospital where he was working in western Minnesota summoned him downstairs, and two federal agents put him in handcuffs.

“Everything kind of shattered,” said Mr. Harsono, who learned that his student visa, which had allowed him to earn a master’s degree in business administration and to then stay for a year to work, had been revoked because of a misdemeanor property destruction conviction. Mr. Harsono, who is married to an American citizen and has applied for a green card, has been held in a county jail since and faces deportation.

The Trump administration’s decision to revoke more than 1,500 student visas in recent weeks has raised concern at college campuses across the country.

The people affected include students involved in activism over the war in Gaza, whom the Trump administration has characterized as disruptive. Some others, including Mr. Harsono, appear to have lost their visas as a result of criminal convictions, some for relatively minor offenses.