One in a series detailing how Trump's immigration policies are transforming America.
It was a Trump-era international love story: Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl gets detained by ICE.
But the detention of the Lithuania-born Tatjana Vesiolko is an unusual one, even in an era of increasingly strict immigration enforcement. She is entering her 11th month in an immigration lock-up. Al Dallasta, her American fiancé, can't understand why.
"She's essentially lost a year of her life for what?" Dallasta said of his partner – a billiards champ, slender with a chestnut bob who friends call "Tia" for short. "She's falling apart in there."
The day President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 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 swept up in the administration's mass deportation campaign.
