An American man falls in love with a woman from Lithuania. ICE took her into custody. The couple thought she would soon be deported. they were wrong.
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Many communities in rural Louisiana rely on the prison economy, including immigrant detention centers, to sustain their livelihoods.
One in a series detailing how President Trump’s immigration policies are changing America.
It was a boy-meets-girl, an international love story for the Trump era. The boy falls in love. The girl is detained by ICE.
However, the detention of Lithuanian-born Tatiana Vesiolko is unusual even in an era of stricter immigration controls. She is in her 11th month under immigration control. Her American fiancée, Al Darasta, doesn’t understand why.
“What did she lose a year of her life for?” Darasta said of her partner. A champion billiards player with a chestnut-colored bob and slender figure, her friends call her “Tia” for short. “She falls apart there.”
On the day President Donald Trump took office on January 20, he signed seven executive orders that set the stage for a surge in immigration enforcement across the country. Vesiolko was among the first to be caught up in the regime’s mass deportation campaign.
The Trump administration is currently detaining more immigrants than at any time since World War II. As of November 30, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported a record 65,735 people in immigration detention.
Deportation flights have become more frequent. But the proportion and number of people like Vesiolko who have been detained for more than six months is increasing.
Two years ago, about 1,300 people, or 4% of the detention population, were held for more than 180 days, according to ICE data. In November, the number reached 6,500 people, or 10% of the detained population. Vesiolko was among them.
She entered the country in 2009 on a visa waiver and stayed without permission. She has no criminal record, has a valid Lithuanian passport, and is from a country that accepts its own citizens. Immigration lawyers say there are no obvious obstacles to her deportation.
The Department of Homeland Security released a statement detailing her case, saying, “Her removal was delayed because illegal aliens could be included in the class action lawsuit.”
DHS did not name the lawsuit or respond to questions from USA TODAY seeking clarification. Darasta said Vesiolko was never informed of the possibility of joining the lawsuit and was not given an opportunity to opt out.
Jessica Vaughn, policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for immigration restrictions, said Vesiolko’s prolonged detention could also be “a symptom of ICE overreach.”
“There is no question that ICE and its partners are making more arrests than they can effectively remove,” she said. “This seems like a case of someone who slipped through the cracks.”
Desperate to be out by Christmas, Vesiolko decided to share her story. “Is this just a mean mistake?” she told USA TODAY by phone. she asked. “Did they lose my file?”
boy meets girl
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Darasta was sure of a few things before he met Vesiolko.
That the Eagles are the greatest team in the National Football League. He would never live on the New Jersey side of the Pennsylvania border. He probably won’t go on a trip abroad. He had no reason to do so.
When he logged into Facebook Dating in 2024, he was one year into a 14-year marriage that ended in divorce.
He and Vesiolko exchanged messages for several days until she fell silent. Thinking she was done with him, he sent her a farewell message, wishing her beauty and wishing her luck. They met for a date that same night at Chickie & Pete’s Pub in New Jersey.
For the next six months, they were inseparable until agents detained Vesiolco at the airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The couple had just returned from their first vacation together. It was Valentine’s Day.
He vividly remembers her being pulled aside at the airport. When Vesiolko was told by federal officials that he would be deported, it was a shock and a foregone conclusion. They imagined she would be heading to Lithuania within a few days.
At home without her, he broke down in tears in the kitchen. She had left him a Valentine’s card.
He read it alone.
“There are so many paths in life,” she wrote. “It is no coincidence that you and I met among people from all over the world.”
Detention costs are calculated in different ways
Mr. Vesiolko has now been detained for 311 days.
The past few months have been difficult for both of them. Vesiolko, 38, struggles to stay energized. She used to be a runner, but now she only gets precious little time outside. Darasta, 43, battles anxiety that worsened as a result of Vesiolko’s detention. He recently quit his job as a safety representative for a major home improvement chain.
With no end in sight to her fiancée’s detention, Darasta calculated the personal financial cost.
Approximately $22,000 in immigration attorney fees. There will be an additional $2,000 concession fee. The jail phone call cost exactly $6,370. His life savings.
Vesiolko counts the cost of missed vacations, dinners she didn’t cook, trips she didn’t take, and more. and the guilt her detention caused Darasta.
Her detention also costs American taxpayers.
The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimates that immigrant detention costs an average of $152 per day per detainee. Detainees with immigration violations and no criminal history are held for an average of 48 days, according to ICE data.
Past presidential administrations have focused on immigration enforcement for violent criminals. President Trump has promised to arrest the “worst of the worst,” but mass deportation efforts have put all undocumented immigrants at risk of detention and deportation.
After his arrest in Puerto Rico, Vesiolko was sent to Richwood Correctional Center in north Louisiana.
Over the next few months, she offered to remain in the United States. She was not eligible for a bond because she was entering the country on an exemption and such visitors are held to higher standards of conduct. Darasta said ICE did not respond to his request for humanitarian parole.
One immigration judge denied her asylum request, and another issued a final deportation order in June.
She didn’t resist it. Darasta mailed his passport to ICE.
Mr. Darasta had planned to meet her in Lithuania. They imagined a new life in Europe, got married, and applied to Vesiolko to return to the United States as American spouses.
“Even before this happened, I knew I wanted to be with her,” Darasta said.
Hope and “personal protection”
Sunday, Dec. 21, marks 180 days since her last deportation order went into effect. This is also the day when the law opens a window to possible remedies.
Immigration lawyers say Ms Vesiolko can now file a so-called “habeas corpus” petition, a formal legal request asking a court to review the legality of her detention. She doesn’t have a lawyer, and now they’re both nearly out of money and begging deportation officials to let them buy their own tickets back home.
“If people voluntarily pay for their own tickets and they’re not committing a crime, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t get on that commercial airline and go to their home country,” said Charles Cook, an Atlanta-based immigration attorney who is not involved in her case.
Under the law, the detention of immigrants is carried out outside the norms of criminal imprisonment..
Immigrants can be detained indefinitely without charge. They can hire lawyers but do not have access to government-appointed representatives. Once in custody, immigrants are held without judgment, with no idea when they will be released or deported. immigration officer, The Trump administration has begun calling these judges “deported judges,” but they are employed and can be fired.
However, Nora Ahmed, legal director of the ACLU of Louisiana, said habeas petitions are difficult to pursue in Louisiana at this time. Judges often allow the government to say, “We’re working on it,” and migrants remain in detention, sometimes for months.
Ahmed said restraint is key to the Trump administration’s message. “This means, ‘If you dare to come, you had better be prepared to be punished.'”
In response to Vesiolko’s request to extend his detention, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin told USA TODAY that immigrants have the option of “self-deportation.”
The administration’s voluntary deportation campaign, which offers a $1,000 bonus to migrants who voluntarily leave, began in early March after Vesiolko was detained.
“I have a life beyond here.”
Vesiolko arrived in the United States from Moscow with $100 in her pocket and knowing that her father, a Russian military veteran who hated America, would never forgive her.
“When I came here, I was scared to go back because my dad would find out,” she said. “He’s a very radical Russian who is against America. Everything about America triggers him. I had no place to go back.”
She grew up in Moscow with her father, his family, and her Lithuanian mother.
At age 21, after her parents’ messy divorce, she fled to New Jersey, where a friend had moved. She studied American English.
The years snowballed. Vesiolko worked under the table as a housekeeper. (The Department of Homeland Security noted that “she freely admitted that she entered the country illegally and never filed taxes.”) She joined a local pool league, made friends, and built a life in America.
“Any bar that has a pool table, people know me,” she said.
When she met Darasta on their first date, she asked him to meet her at a pub where she was unlikely to run into anyone she knew.
“But soon my friend saw me and said, ‘Hey, pool shark! Watch out for her!'” It was a funny first date. ”
They now make five calls a day over expensive jail phone lines and video calls that cost 30 cents a minute.
She calls Darasta “Sweet Cheeked.” When he started calling her “Freckles”, she taught him Russian. Now he says, “Good night, Moya Venushka.” My little freckles.
“He reminded me that I had a future,” she said. “That I have a life when I get out of here. He reminds me that I’m loved.”
It dragged on for months.
Vesiolko has seen other immigrant women come and go, being released or deported. Most of the people with her in long-term detention are there because they are fighting to remain in the United States, she says. She isn’t.
Not knowing how long she’ll be indoors or how long it will be before she meets Darasta, she holds on to the thoughts she learned from her mother’s Catholic faith.
That seemingly endless detention is a torment.
“If that’s the price I pay to be with the love of my life, I can pay that price,” she said. “Because I know I’ll be so happy after this.”
Lauren Villagran covers immigration for USA TODAY. Contact him at lvillagran@usatoday.com.
