Two Minnesota towns rally to protect Ukraine war refugee whose future is in doubt

ST. PETER, MINN. — Daria “Dasha” Shyroka is a 19-year-old college student with a naturally bubbly disposition. She’s rarely seen without a smile, even in her precarious predicament: War in the homeland she hasn’t visited since 2021 but could soon see her forced return.

On a recent afternoon the smile was gone and Shyroka sat in a quiet room in the library at Gustavus Adolphus College, tears streaming down her face. The sophomore is often found here, her head buried in books. She apologized for losing her composure, her voice catching as she recalled the moment three years ago when everything changed.

It was early on Feb. 24, 2022, well before sunrise in the Alexandria home where Shyroka was living as a high school exchange student. Her phone woke her: Her mom calling from her hometown of Poltava in central Ukraine, between Kyiv and Kharkiv. Russia had attacked, her mom said. She was glad her only child was in a safe place.

Then her mom switched to the past tense: If this was the end, she said, “just know that me and Dad loved you so much.”

After the call, the teenager threw up.

The ensuing three years have been an emotional whirlwind: Her typical teen angst was stirred up by news reports of drone attacks on her hometown. Two communities, in Alexandria and at Gustavus, supporting her during her time in limbo. Her dad on the front lines while her mother, who works in the legal profession, processing estates of the war dead. Working toward becoming a doctor like her grandparents — taking 19 college credits this semester as a double major in chemistry and nursing — despite not knowing if her stay in the United States will abruptly end as President Donald Trump weighs revoking the legal status of fellow displaced Ukrainians.

“It’s hard to imagine what’s going to happen next,” she said. “My reality is I need to be prepared for anything. The only thing I’m really wishing for is for Russia to stop attacking my sweet home and just let Ukraine be safe and happy again, like it was before.”

Instead of focusing on her own uncertainty — whether she’ll finish college here or be sent back to a war zone — Shyroka focuses on the bigger issue. Because she knows plenty of Ukrainians in the United States have had it worse than she has, and that they all have been the lucky ones, their everyday lives not dominated by war.

Shyroka is one of 240,000 Ukrainians displaced by the Russian invasion and living in the United States on temporary legal status. Reuters reported earlier this month that Trump was weighing whether to revoke the status they received from President Joe Biden’s administration. The White House press secretary said a decision has yet to be made.

Removing the so-called “temporary protective status,” which the U.S. sometimes grants people unable to safely return to their homelands, could put Shyroka and other Ukrainians displaced by war on a fast track to deportation, according to the Reuters report.

Her J-1 visa for exchange students ended in June 2022, at the end of her year in the program. Applying for temporary protective status was the only option, said Rhonda Stuewe, her host mom in Alexandria; to reapply for the student visa, she would have had to leave the United States while waiting to see if her visa application was granted.

She’s been on temporary protective status for nearly three years, reapplying every 18 months. That status does not come with government benefits as is the case with refugee status, so Shyroka’s supporters have scrambled to raise money to pay for her stay. Her temporary legal status runs out April 1. She applied in winter for another extension and awaits an answer.

Shyroka’s host family in Alexandria reached out to Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s office, which is asking U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to expedite her application.

“Dasha represents what America is all about: a country of people who came from other places to seek a better life,” Klobuchar said in an interview Tuesday. “Dasha is exactly the kind of kid and student and person we want in Minnesota. She’s a hard-working immigrant, legally in our country, building a life in our country. She could potentially stay in our country or could go back to Ukraine. In either case, we don’t want her to have to leave right now.”

Klobuchar hopes Shyroka’s situation — her support in Alexandria, her ambition as a student, the fact she was here before the war started — can help sway a decision. The senator noted that Shyroka has done everything legally and highlights the moral quandary: “We shouldn’t be sending this girl back to a war zone, especially with her dad on the front lines.”

Some Ukrainians have petitioned Trump for permanent residency, which could eventually lead to citizenship. Stuewe spearheaded an effort in Alexandria to send more than 500 letters to the White House, proactively pleading Shyroka’s case.

Back on the hilltop at Gustavus, a huge smile broke out on Shyroka’s face when she saw her host mom, Stuewe, and Stuewe’s 19-year-old daughter, Emma, who’d driven from Alexandria to visit.

“Hello, beautiful! So great to see you,” Shyroka told Emma, who she calls her “sister by heart, if not by blood.”

Her host family brought gifts: A bouquet of flowers, a handful of gift cards from St. Peter businesses, a dinner of Shyroka’s favorite takeout sushi.

The communities of Alexandria and Gustavus have made Shyroka’s success possible. Gustavus costs upward of $70,000 a year. Shyroka secured a Dean’s scholarship to cut that in half. An anonymous donor gave $12,500 a year for four years. The Stuewes’ church in Alexandria, Calvary Lutheran Church, donated $10,000 a year for four years. An annual breakfast fundraiser near Alexandria has raised more money. She has a work-study job and works nights as a certified nursing assistant at a St. Peter memory care facility.

On top of that, she’s a model student. She maintains nearly a 4.0 grade point average and won an award for outstanding first-year students. She volunteers at the Mayo Clinic and the Red Cross. She is president of a number of student clubs like the Pre-Health Club and the Eastern European Club. She did analytical chemistry research on campus last summer. The college is sending her to a conference at Harvard Medical School.

Stuewe is doing everything she can to extend Shyroka’s stay. She dropped off another 110 letters to Trump before driving to St. Peter last week. She doesn’t focus on the politics of the Ukraine war — she’s a political independent who’d rather not say how she voted in 2024 — instead focusing on this remarkable young woman who speaks a half-dozen languages, is a virtuoso piano player and played varsity tennis in Alexandria.

“We’ve gotten so callous sometimes, too black and white, and we don’t consider the casualties of all our policies,” Stuewe said. “Dasha would be a casualty of that flip of the switch [on the legal status of Ukrainians displaced by war]. And she’s not the only one.”

Shyroka hopes she can get permanent residency status someday; she cannot attend medical school on her current status.

In the meantime, she lives in limbo. She worries about her dad on the front lines. She talks with her mom daily (if her mom’s electricity is working). She doesn’t have nightmares about the war; she studies so much that her nightmares are about school.

It’s during the daytime hours that she worries about war back home: Her parents, her friends, her two cats, her country. She wants to return to Ukraine — not now, but someday.

“My biggest fear is that if something happens to my loved ones, I won’t have time to say goodbye,” she said. “It’s scary to go home knowing there was a bomb that ruined my neighbors’ houses. What are the chances that’s going to be my house in the next hour, when I’m asleep? That’s the scariest part. And I wish I could do something about it. But I can’t.”