Delaware County nurse Monica Ryadi and her husband couldn’t wait to take their 3-year-old son to Disneyland, so he could meet his adored Cars movie characters — Lightning McQueen, Tow Mater, and the rest.
They didn’t get there.
The family had barely stepped off the plane at Los Angeles International Airport on Sept. 15 when they were surrounded by four or five men in street clothes who said they were ICE agents, flashed a badge, and snapped Ryadi into handcuffs.
When her husband protested, the officers threatened to arrest him and send their toddler, Luca, to child-protective services, the couple said in court filings. One officer told Ryadi she was here illegally and, “I don’t care if you are the president of the United States or a congresswoman like Ilhan Omar,” court records say.
Ryadi, 30, said she kept insisting that she was a legal immigrant.
And that’s true.
She has lived in the U.S. since she was 9, brought to this country by her parents when they fled religious persecution in Indonesia.
They entered on legal visas in 2005, and five years later were officially granted what’s called “Withholding of Removal.” That’s where an Immigration Court judge agrees that deporting someone to their homeland could get them hurt or killed.
It’s similar to asylum, the key difference being the federal government retains the right to deport someone if it can find a third country willing to take them. Withholding does not include a path to citizenship.
Traditionally, people who gained that relief were left alone.
Now that’s changed, as the Trump administration takes a new, hard view — seeing those who have Withholding, even those who have lived here for decades, as candidates for deportation. Some immigrants are held in ICE detention for months while the administration tries to find a foreign government to accept them.
On Tuesday, after 15 days in custody at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California, Ryadi was ordered freed by a U.S. magistrate judge. Her husband and son flew to her immediately, and the family reunited that night, at the same Los Angeles hotel they booked when they planned to visit Disneyland.
“It’s a lot of emotions,” Ryadi said in an interview after her release. “I am still terrified, I’m still living under fear.”
At the same time, she said, “I can’t stop thinking about the other women that are in there.”
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Ryadi was “an illegal alien” taken into custody “during a targeted enforcement operation at Los Angeles International Airport.”
DHS said she entered the U.S. legally in 2005 but “overstayed her welcome” in violation of immigration laws. An immigration judge issued a deportation order in 2010, DHS said, but did not note that such an order is a standard part of receiving permission to stay, work, and live in the U.S. under a grant of Withholding of Removal.
Ryadi’s husband, Steven Sary, 35, said he was overjoyed to be reunited with his wife. “But there’s still work to do,” he said. ”What’s the next step for us? We’re still living in fear.”
He tried to stay positive and supportive while Ryadi was detained, even at moments when they were both crying on the phone. He told her, “You don’t have to worry about Luca, I’m doing the best I can.”
The couple has arranged their lives around their son, setting schedules so one parent is always home with him. Ryadi works weekends at Riddle Hospital in Media, while her husband works Monday to Friday as a UPS truck driver.
The two met when they were children growing up in Philadelphia, and married in 2021.
Ryadi graduated high school from the Academy at Palumbo in the Bella Vista neighborhood, then earned an associate degree at Philadelphia Community College before obtaining her bachelor’s degree at Ohio University.
She became a nurse, she said, because she wanted to help people.
The court order that freed Ryadi came the same day that the Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration could resume the fast deportation of immigrants to countries other than their own.
The court granted the government’s emergency request to block an appeals court ruling that said the process was unlawful, because immigrants were not given sufficient opportunity to raise safety concerns.
The Supreme Court said it would hear oral arguments in the case in December, with a final ruling likely next year.
“What happened to Monica should be treated as an extrajudicial kidnapping,” said Ryadi’s Philadelphia immigration attorney, Eric Rosenfeld, who is handling the case pro bono.
He noted that Ryadi is a registered nurse, the wife of an American citizen, and the parent of a son who is an American citizen — yet ICE casually told her she would be sent to an undisclosed third country.
She was never given any type of document or warrant to explain her arrest, he said. Upon release she was fitted with a GPS ankle monitor, and she knows ICE will likely try again to deport her, the attorney said.
“This is a respite. Not security,” Rosenfeld said.
As the Trump administration pursues its mass-deportation agenda, the protection offered by Withholding and similar relief “is proving to be very little protection at all,” the American Immigration Council wrote. “The Trump administration is trying to ship them out wherever it can — and keep them locked up in the meantime.”
A Philadelphia man who was arrested in July remains in detention, despite having lived legally for almost 20 years.
Mamadou Fadel Cherif of West Oak Lane was granted protection from potential political violence in his native Guinea. Now the administration wants to deport him to Ghana.
Ryadi’s arrest added to the steadily growing number of immigrants taken into custody at American airports. The Philadelphia advocacy organization Asian Americans United estimates more than 20 people have been arrested at Philadelphia International Airport or while seeking to fly there since July 12.
To receive Withholding of Removal, applicants must prove they were persecuted in the past or that their lives would be threatened in the future, that their home government harmed or will harm them — or failed to control others who might do so.
When that relief is granted, the immigration judge also enters a deportation order, then tells the government it cannot deport the person to their homeland. In that way the removal is “withheld.”
“We were planning to have an amazing trip with the family,” Sary said, “to see Cars Land with our son. But that changed.”
“It felt like I was kidnapped,” Ryadi said. “I kept saying, ‘I’m legal, I’m a legal immigrant.’”
She grew up in the United States with government permission, has work authorization, a Real ID, and a Social Security number. She pays taxes. Yet she was chained wrist, ankle and waist like a criminal, she said.
Ryadi wonders if the ICE operation against her began in Philadelphia. As her family waited to board the plane, she said, a woman in a black jacket approached and made small talk.
The woman didn’t have luggage, Ryadi said, and she didn’t get on the flight. Instead, she walked away to talk to a man who also did not appear to be a passenger.
When Ryadi was released from the Adelanto detention center, 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles, immigrant-aid volunteers gave her a ride all the way to the city.
There she flew into the arms of her husband and son.
“I’m so happy to see you!” she cried.
At the hotel, the family saw people decked out in Disney attire, coming back from the theme park. Young Luca asked if they could go.
On Wednesday his parents took him to Cars Land.
