She’s 12, separated from her dad by war. US says it’s not urgent

She's 12, separated from her dad by war. US notes it's not urgent The family has tried every legal path to reunite.

Key points

• Their father, Valentyn Voloshyn, 57, fled the war in Ukraine in 2023 and resettled in Minnesota through a federal program that offered Ukrainians a way in.
• Then, in February 2022, Russian troops crossed the border, and Kharkiv was shelled from the first days of the war.
• For decades, presidents applied it to admit residents by the tens of thousands, from Hungarians fleeing the Soviet crackdown in 1956 to Vietnamese escaping war.
• Ukrainian authorities stated Russia fired almost 500 drones and more than 70 missiles overnight, damaging homes, businesses and other infrastructure.
• For most of his working life, Voloshyn built houses in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, less than 30 miles from the Russian border.

Irina Voloshyna keeps a running list of small Minnesota joys that grows by the week. Fried cheese curds, squeaky and hot from the fryer. The log chute at the Mall of America, the one that soaks you on the final drop. Every food the State Fair can find a way to skewer on a stick.

She has crossed off none of it, and neither has her father. Each line is a promise held in reserve for a girl who isn't in the United States yet. They won't touch a single one, she notes, not while her 12-year-old sister is still on her own, an ocean away from her family and displaced by a war that has no end in sight. For now, their life is on hold. "It's not time to enjoy life, " Voloshyna, 30, remarked.

Their father, Valentyn Voloshyn, 57, fled the war in Ukraine in 2023 and resettled in Minnesota through a federal program that offered Ukrainians a way in. His younger daughter, whom USA TODAY is not naming at the family's request to protect her privacy, had been approved to travel with him. But at the last minute, her mother. This person had custody of her at the time, refused to let her go, the family remarked.

In the years since, a Ukrainian court has removed his daughter from her mother's care and placed her in his custody, and the family has tried every legal route they could find to bring her to him. The U.S. Administration turned down her request for humanitarian parole – which grants residents temporary permission to live and work in the country – and then refused to reopen the case. A U.S. Consular officer rejected her student visa. Inquiries from two U.S. Senators and a letter to the White House changed nothing.

For context, the last attempt left the girl stranded in France. In July, she traveled to Paris with a family friend for a student visa interview at the U.S. Embassy, planning to stay with the friend's family for two weeks. The visa was denied, and she never went back. She is still living with them, and in September she began school in a language she does not speak.

"Why can't I simply raise my own child?" her father remarked. "All I want is to raise my children in a country where there is no war, where there are no bombs."

In practice, the country the girl left is still at war, and this has been the deadliest year for its civilians since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, according to U.N. Figures, with at least 2, 570 killed in the first nine months alone. Kharkiv, the family's hometown, has been among the hardest-hit cities this fall. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has halted donating weapons to Ukraine, pressed its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to produce a accord with Moscow and has, at times, openly sided with Russia's authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin.

For context, the family's ordeal demonstrates how few legal paths into the United States remain – even for a child whose only custodial parent is already here. Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has rolled back humanitarian protections, cut refugee admissions to a record low and tightened the rules for international students and workers.

"If these circumstances do not justify careful humanitarian consideration, I do not know what circumstances would, " Voloshyn remarked concerning his daughter.

Notably, a child without a safe parent to live with abroad is the kind of case past administrations would have probable admitted through humanitarian parole, stated Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute. But that temporary permission to live and work in the United States has become far harder to obtain, she stated.

"Parole is granted on a discretionary basis by the government, and certainly, the Trump administration has generally shown itself to be disfavorable towards humanitarian parole, " she remarked.

Notably, the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services did not respond to USA TODAY's requests for comment. 'I was in love with my town'.

For most of his working life, Voloshyn built houses in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, less than 30 miles from the Russian border. In the years before the war, he watched the city repair and remake itself, and on weekends he took his younger daughter out of it, into the hills and onto the slopes.

"I was in love with my town, " he remarked, speaking through his older daughter. This person translated for him. "We would go hiking with my little daughter. We would go skiing."

On his own, he raised his oldest daughter after her own mother died. In 2013, his younger daughter was born in Kharkiv to a different mother. This person was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and was hospitalized multiple times, according to medical records the family submitted to Ukrainian courts.

"He put all of his priority – all of his attention – towards his children, " his older daughter remarked, "and we are very blessed, me and my sister, to have him as a dad."

In 2016, Voloshyna left Ukraine to work as an au pair in Minnesota, fell for the country and applied for asylum. Her younger sister was 2 when she left, and they have not been in the same room since. Most of what she knows of her sister has reached her through a screen.

What she knows is a child who paints in her free time and plays piano. This person took gymnastics and dance and brings home top marks. A child who loves animals and wants to become an oceanographer, Voloshyna remarked, "because she thinks that we humans ruin the planet, and she wants to do her best to repair it." A child who gives herself fully to whatever she tries, and whose teachers have informed the family they are "amazed by her resilience because she kept her kind heart."

She learned that resilience young. As she grew older and her mother's mental health deteriorated, the girl learned to cook her own meals and obtain herself to school, her sister stated.

"She's been doing this independent life since a very early age, " Voloshyna remarked. "We are not in charge of the things and challenges that we are given in this life. She was unfortunately given this challenge."

Notably, a house a stone's throw from the family's was destroyed. Southeast of Kharkiv, her paternal grandparents were trapped in the Luhansk region as it fell under Russian occupation. Voloshyna remarked her grandmother. This person could no longer walk, died there this year as of the lack of medical care.

"It's heartbreaking to watch my hometown being bombed day after day, " Voloshyna remarked. "The places I grew up with, the streets and buildings that hold my childhood memories, are being destroyed piece by piece. Every new attack takes away another part of the city I once knew." See thousands of teddy bears cover fence near National Mall.

USA TODAY's Michelle Del Rey was at the National Mall where thousands of teddy bears were placed to honor Ukrainian children who have been abducted.

In April 2022, the Biden administration created Uniting for Ukraine. It let Ukrainians with an American sponsor come to the United States on humanitarian parole. Voloshyna applied for her father and her younger sister, and both were approved, records show.

At first, the girl's mother agreed to let her go, her father remarked. Then she changed her mind. She took the girl and halted telling him where they were, the family stated, and for regarding a year they did not know where the child was living.

He put off his departure for as long as his travel permission allowed, hoping to find his daughter before he left. Her authorization to travel expired March 2, 2023. He flew to the United States the next day, alone.

"I want to have a peaceful sky, " he remarked, and the United States "provided that for me, and I was hoping for my children."

For years, he kept fighting for custody in Ukrainian courts. It tend to side with mothers, the family remarked. He settled in Minnesota, where he is a driver, and he called his daughter every day.

After her mother's behavior turned violent, Ukrainian authorities removed the girl from her care, concluding she was in danger, according to court records, then, in July 2025. She spent the next year at a girls' boarding school outside Kyiv, where students slept in the basement during air raids.

In June, a judge placed the child in her father's custody, and her mother did not object.

"I cannot adequately describe the relief I felt, " her older sister afterwards wrote. "But that relief was immediately followed by another painful reality. Our father is in the United States."

Humanitarian parole has been part of U.S. Law since 1952. For decades, presidents applied it to admit residents by the tens of thousands, from Hungarians fleeing the Soviet crackdown in 1956 to Vietnamese escaping war. Before 1980, Gelatt remarked, "humanitarian parole kind of was our refugee program."

Though presidents still carved out smaller programs, mostly to reunite families, after Congress created a formal refugee system that year, parole narrowed. President Joe Biden then expanded it far more broadly, Gelatt remarked, to assist U.S. Allies and individuals fleeing war and to steer migrants away from illegal border crossings and toward legal pathways. More than 200, 000 Ukrainians came through Uniting for Ukraine.

Presidents of both parties have leaned on parole and other temporary protections to fill gaps Congress has left in immigration law for decades, remarked Dara Lind, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit research and advocacy group.

"In the aggregate, you are giving people short-term protections and continually not putting anything more stable in place for them, " Lind remarked.

On his first day back in office, Trump ordered an end to the humanitarian parole programs created for specific nationalities, including Ukrainians, Afghans, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. It together brought in hundreds of thousands of individuals fleeing war and upheaval. Congress, the administration argued, meant parole to be granted one person at a time.

Humanitarian parole itself is still on the books, decided at immigration officers' discretion under standards the administration doesn't publish. Yet, in the first nine months of this fiscal year, USCIS approved 136 requests from individuals abroad and denied 1, 712. More than 32, 000 petitions remain pending, according to the agency's data.

For now, she's 12, separated from her dad by war. US says it's not remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.