An Indonesian national from Marshall was released from custody on Thursday afternoon after he had been arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in March.
Aditya Wahyu Harsono, 34, who has lived in Minnesota on student visas for almost a decade, was arrested at his workplace in Marshall and had been held since in the Kandiyohi County Jail in Willmar.
“I’m happy, that’s what it is, excited,” Harsono said after his release from the immigration court in Fort Snelling. He said that he looked forward to seeing his infant daughter after 49 days in detention, and “eat good food, just hold her tight and go to sleep.”
A U.S. district judge on Wednesday ordered Harsono’s immediate release after concluding that his arrest and detention were likely retaliation for his support for causes such as Black Lives Matter and Palestinian rights.
Government officials sought his deportation, citing a misdemeanor graffiti conviction from 2022 and claiming in a March 23 memo that his visa should be revoked because he posed a “threat to U.S. public safety.”
In a 34-page decision, U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez ruled that Harsono’s detention violated his First Amendment rights, which she affirmed apply to both citizens and noncitizens.
“The Court finds that [Harsono] has shown that he is in custody in violation of the First Amendment and is entitled to a writ of habeas corpus for his immediate release,” Menendez wrote in the ruling, filed Wednesday.
Menendez wrote that she found the government’s reasons for detaining Harsono to be a pretext and pointed to “inconsistent” explanations from federal officials in court for why he should remain in detention.