Ukrainian Father on Legal Parole Detained by ICE Agents at Walmart Parking Lot

Dmytro Kulyk was picking up an order at the Walmart in Maple Grove, Minnesota when immigration agents surrounded him in the parking lot. The 39-year-old Ukrainian father, who entered the United States legally in late 2023 under the Uniting 4 Ukraine humanitarian parole program, is now being held at Kandiyohi County Jail in Willmar, Minnesota and faces deportation.

"I hoped I would find peace in America. I've done everything the government required, I don't understand why I am behind bars," Kulyk told The Daily Beast from the jail in Willmar.

Kulyk had been working as a delivery driver and doing roofing work to support his family when agents closed in on him last month. His wife, 38, and their 5-year-old daughter came with him when they entered the country in late 2023, sponsored by U.S. citizens under the Uniting 4 Ukraine program. That program was established in April 2022 specifically to allow Ukrainians fleeing Russia's war to live and work in the United States on humanitarian parole.

His case is not isolated. In Philadelphia, a woman named Zhanna has been monitoring a group chat called "Ukrainians in Detention" that now has 349 members. She joined the group after her friends Andrii and Yaroslav were detained. Another Ukrainian refugee, identified only as Bartosh, holds legal Temporary Protected Status but stopped going into the office and now works from home.

A separate account came from Shakhnoza Mihboieva, who lives in Aurora, Illinois and wrote in a USA Today opinion column about her husband Ilkhom Muradov being stopped by ICE on Oct. 18 while driving out of a public parking lot near Chicago O'Hare International Airport. Muradov immediately showed officers his documents, including notice that the family had applied for re-parole. Mihboieva had found work at Walmart while her husband drove for Uber; their three sons were enrolled in school, with their oldest already applying to college and hoping to become an endocrinologist.

"We came to the United States legally. We followed every rule. We believed in the welcome America offered to families fleeing war. I understand the importance of laws and procedures, but I do not believe the American people intended for humanitarian parole families, who were invited here legally, to be separated and detained like this," Mihboieva wrote.

The friction between ICE enforcement tactics and civil liberties claims has also played out visibly in San Antonio, where a video surfaced showing an alleged migrant ramming his car into ICE vehicles in a Walmart parking lot near Blanco and Wurzbach. The identity of the driver was not released. Alex Svehla, head organizer of 50501 San Antonio, criticized the agency's approach directly: "They're not going through legal processes such as obtaining warrants or bringing people to court. They instead opt to just kidnap people off the street."

ICE director Todd Lyons, speaking on Fox's Hannity, defended his agency's operations and pushed back on the characterization of agents as aggressors. "It's constant impediments, constant attacks like this," Lyons said. "It's not safe for my folks. It's not safe for the public."

For Kulyk, the immediate question is whether the legal pathway his family followed — a program created by the U.S. government to welcome Ukrainian war refugees — will count for anything in his removal proceedings. No specific charges or formal grounds for deportation were disclosed in connection with his case.