Utah Violinist Describes Terror of ICE Detainment
The Utah violinist who was detained for 17 days by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spoke at length on Friday about his experience at an ICE detention center in Aurora, Colorado.
Utah violinist John Shin and his wife Danae Snow Shin.
Some background about this story: John Shin, 37, entered the U.S. legally as a child and is married to a U.S. citizen, making him eligible for a green card, according to his attorney Adam Crayk.
Shin, who originally is from South Korea, entered the U.S. with his father at age 10 under a tourist visa. His father switched to a student visa, under which Shin was a dependent. Shin later received status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, until it was revoked due to a 2020 driving-while-impaired conviction, according to his lawyer.
Shin has a master’s degree in music performance from the University of Utah and has performed with the Utah Symphony and Ballet West. Shin has been married for four years to a DaNae Shin, a U.S. citizen, who helped rally their Salt Lake City community to help him, with a GoFundMe campaign as well as a benefit concert and other efforts by fellow musicians.
Due to his marital status, "John is 100 percent eligible for a green card," Crayk said on Friday. "He doesn't need a waiver, he doesn't need forgiveness, his impaired driver conviction does not block him in any way, shape or form." Shin said that they had been working toward getting him a green card, but had experience financial setbacks that led them to delay the process.
Nonetheless Shin was required to post a $25,000 bond and to wear an ankle monitor in order to be released from the Colorado detention center and return to his family in Salt Lake City.
When he was arrested on August 18, Shin had been in Colorado Springs for work; he was likely flagged because he was visiting Fort Carson Military base.
Agents from the Department of Homeland Security met him at his hotel, spoke to him for 20 minutes, and then "I was handcuffed in front of the hotel and taken into another office," he said. At that office he was further interviewed for another 3-4 hours.
"Shortly after being detained, the special agents gave me a three-minute phone call, it was a very short phone call, to my wife," Shin said. "It was one of the worst moments in my life, to hear my wife cry, on her birthday. I said 'Happy birthday, honey. I have some bad news, I'm being detained right now.' And I asked her to call our attorney."
With shackles on both his wrists and ankles, Shin was transferred 70 miles away to the Denver Detention Center in Aurora, "which was a long drive from Colorado Springs," Shin said. "It was a brutal drive, too. It was a very shocking moment for me, I never thought I would have to feel what it's like to be shackled on my ankles and wrists, feeling like some kind of a serious criminal, as if I had murdered someone."
After arriving at the detention center he spent another six hours in a cold cell with concrete walls. He was admitted to the facility around 2 a.m.
"I was absolutely terrified. I cried all day."
In his block at the detention center "there were about 70-80 people, and I was sharing a room with three other detainees. Two were from India, one was from China," he said.
They slept on thin mats (like yoga mats) over a metal frame bed. "Every day for about six days I requested a pillow," he said, but he never received one. He had one blanket that didn't quite keep out the cold - on Friday he was still recovering from the cough he developed during his time there.
In the facility the detainees wore different colored shirts - red, orange, blue or green. They didn't know what the shirts meant, but detainees speculated that red was for those who arrived illegally and had serious felony charges. Shin wore a green shirt.
Shin said he did not feel threatened by his fellow detainees, though he noted that often just one officer was there to supervise some 70-80 people.
"Interacting with any of these detainees, there was a sense of connection with all people from different nations," Shin said. "Especially the Chinese people I was able to connect with in my block. They did not commit any crime, most of them entered legally, they're wonderful people, they were so supportive. I wish that the immigration process could be easier and could be done more lawfully rather than being forced."
In his interactions with other detainees, "in about 90 percent of the stories that I heard, the ICE agent called them one day and said they needed to come into the office to verify some information and they'd love to help them," Shin said. "So they'd been lured into these locations and then when they go visit these places they get detained."
At the detention center there were eight phones for the 80 people in his cell block, and always a long line and wait to use one.
"There was not much to do. We weren't even able to go outside. The only open space was a concrete walls with a little bit of open roof on the top, that was the only outside area we were given for five hours a day," he said. There was a library with about four books.
When it came to the officers at the detention center, "the tone was more commanding than cooperative," Shin said. "There were a lot of racist jokes because most of the detainees in the block didn't speak English well, so they couldn't understand what the officers or some ICE agents were saying. But clearly, as an English speaker, I understood that some of those were very racist comments."
The uncertainty of his predicament was a constant source of anxiety. "When you are inside the detention center you have no information coming from outside," he said. "I was in constant panic. Every night I wasn't sure what was going to happen tomorrow or the following day."
"Every day somebody would be deported or somebody would be moving to a different facility, you never know what is going to happen to you when you are inside the detention center," Shin said. "They just come and go at 2 a.m., 3 a.m., grabbing you and then saying, 'It's time to go, pack your things, you only have 10 minutes.' It was terrifying, the whole process."
Three meals were provided, at 6 a.m., 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. "Usually just mostly rice and pinto beans," Shin said.
On the advice of his attorney, Shin didn't sign any of the papers he was presented with, at the facility. He said it would have been difficult to figure out what he was signing. "Their lingo was a little bit confusing to me," he said. "They don't tell you much about what you're signing - just 'Here is a document, go ahead and sign.' I wished there was a little bit more explanation about what they were requesting us to sign."
Though many of the detainees there were from Colorado, there were also ones that had been transferred from other facilities. One of the more notorious ones that the detainees were talking about was the Mississippi detention center. "If it's 80 people per block at the Aurora center, it's about 160 people per block at the Mississippi detention center," Shin said. "It's an open-roof concept - people's beds were getting wet when it was raining. Just awful stories. They were getting sick. Hygiene was not good - they were only given maybe one roll of toilet paper between four people per week. They were serving breakfast at 3 a.m. and lunch at 9 a.m. and dinner at 3 p.m. I don't know how these people are surviving over there, just awful conditions."
Shin felt despair for much of the time he was detained, but "I did not want to give up because I have my family here," he said. "I was very depressed and very emotional for the first week, until my amazing wife - she worked through things very quickly. I don't know how she did it. I'm still shocked to be back out here. I'm go grateful. Thank you to Adam and John for accepting this case."
Shin met his wife Danae Snow in middle school, at an after-school orchestra program. At the time, he was too shy to ask her out, but they kept running into each other, in college, and at orchestra gigs. Finally after one concert, he asked her out to dinner. They were married in 2021 at a courthouse, then had a celebratory wedding in 2022. Shin has two stepchildren.
"I did not see this coming. It was always in the process, we were working toward our green card, unfortunately it happened suddenly one day that I was detained," Shin said. "I consider myself an American. This is my home. I have no home to go back to. I went to elementary School, middle school, high school and college here; all of the friends and families I know, they live in Utah. I was born in Korea and I do cherish that part of the culture. I am hard working and loving husband and father. I am a proud person....For my entire life, living in the United States, I always thought I was an American. This is where all my memories are."
You can watch the full press conference with Shin, his wife and his attorney here:
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Replies
Thank you.
I can't begin to imagine how horrible this experience is for Mr. Shin. I hope he can get his green card situation finalized and work towards citizenship, if that now is the next logical step given his situation.
This is not the America I grew up in. We are drifting into shameful and frightening territory. Mr. Shin is one of the many people who made America great. Mr. Trump and his party have gone radically Anti-American.
Will, it IS kind of the America you grew up in, even if you've had such a cloistered existence that you didn't realize it.
David's unfortunately completely right - America was founded on racism and injustice. That doesn't mean a better country isn't possible or worth fighting for, or that there aren't important legal ideals that are American.
I hope Mr. Shin finds a speedy resolution to the injustice perpetrated upon him, but his example of being subject to the "arrest first, ask questions later" methods of this administration illustrates how without a guarantee of due process and minimum rights for all, no one can claim to be safe.
I will disagree - David is not COMPLETELY right. This incident would NOT have happened at any point, in the fashion it did, in the last fifty years. While the generalization that racism and injustice have indeed been a part of the American existence since it's inception, there are degrees of everything. Just because a piece of wood created by a ten year old for a school project has f-holes and four strings and is called a violin doesn't make it just the same as a violin created by a skilled luthier. It does a musician (or country) no service to pretend otherwise.
Ray, I don't know what was going on with people who were in the US without permission around 50 years ago. Around that time, we had things going on like cops beating up males for having long hair.
We had National Guard troops firing on war protesters at Kent State, killing four and wounding nine.
And we had, 5-6000 National Guard troops deployed in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention.
There was enough other stuff going on that I doubt an attempt to deport a musician would have made anyone's radar, unless it was Mick Jagger or someone like that.
Here is why an "an attempt to deport a musician" with no serious criminal record is on people's radar: The Supreme Court ruled just a few days ago that ICE officers can stop people solely based on their apparent race or ethnicity, the fact that they speak English with an accent or speak Spanish, their presence at particular locations like farms or pickup sites for day laborers; and the type of work they do. Longtime citizens in LA have to walk around with passports, in fear they'll simply be rounded up, because that is the kind of thing that has been happening.
People are being picked up by masked officers and brought without due process to mass deportation camps like the ones that Shin described. The camps are cropping up in every state, with some $608 million being diverted from FEMA to build "migrant detention centers."
This is not something to dismiss as "things have always been bad." They are indeed getting very, very, very much worse.
Change.org is collecting signatures on a petition urging DHS to halt deportation proceedings and allow John to remain in Utah. Click here for the page to read and/or sign the petition.
There’s a fine editorial cartoon that touches on this:
Laurie is right.
What Laurie said. No Gaslighting zone.
Laurie, this recent Supreme Court decision didn't establish anything new. ICE has had broad investigative powers ever since the Immigration and Nationality Act, passed in 1952. This act granted immigration officers the authority to interrogate anyone believed to be an alien regarding their right to be in the U.S., even without a warrant.
The only thing that changed recently was that a Federal District judge ruled that ICE couldn't do that, and then the Supreme Court overrode that decision, saying that they still can.
This is not to claim that any of this is ideal or right. I've always been cynical about government and politicians. All I'm trying to put across is that if anyone thinks that the US government has been some sort of pinnacle of virtue until just recently, they simply haven't been paying attention.
Yes, I myself have been arrested under false pretenses, and I am US-born full-citizen white dude with no foreign accent.
This is happening on a massive scale in a very intentional way. It is not “same as it ever was,” that is way too dismissive.
David, Local cops hassling long hairs without cause (whether in the past or now) is not the same as a top down directed policy from the President. Your local PD wasn't given 75 billion in funding and you were not sent to another continent in the dead of night. Of course the US government hasn't been a pinnacle of virtue. But it also hasn't ever been as intentionally malevolent.
A while ago, some police departments were "de-funded". Now there's some backlash in the other direction.
Today is the anniversary of 9/11 when foreign terrorists brought down the Twin Towers, killing approximately three thousand people.
Yesterday, we had a political assassination. And another school shooting.
The Obama administration detained over 5 million people, and deported over 3 million. The estimated number of deportations under both Trump administrations is 1.2 million so far.
(figures for both can vary, depending on the source)
When has the US ever been "smooth sailing"?
Again, I'm not claiming that any of this is ideal or "right". I just like to include facts in my assessments of things, and not allow my views to be based solely on emotions or political polarization. (I have never been a member of any political party. I don't trust any of 'em.)
The Article is most disturbing yet this is a Violinist forum and at the moment I will defer commenting except to say, we've seen some and most recently Detention Center's televised with Beds/ Chairs/TV and the like which seem a world more comfortable than what Mr. Shin described noting he was in Aurora, Colorado, where Horrid's did occur with Illegals breaking into Apartment dwellings of Tenants and American Citizens brutally harmed & their own apartments being broken into by brutal Criminals also Members of the Gang, Tren de Arague, which are dangerous individual's from Venezuela and a Terrorist Organisation having infiltrated our US Southern Border during prior years of Open Border Policies ... I am truly saddened for Mr. Shin. I may ring my friends in Salt Lake City in a few days to ask Family of our Friend, Luthier, Peter Paul Prier, Sr., now morte, yet a close friend of Poppa and myself, if they have any extra Info on this very upsetting ordeal ... I can/ would only suggest the Ordeal and Travesty of an Assassination of a Great US Patriot Charlie Kirk not be disregarded terming Charlie Kirk anything short of a marveled US Patriot loving this Country and many College Kids always open to Dialogue whether it agreed with his views yet eager listening to tons of many other ideas and views of our Youth in hundreds of Colleges across America since 2013 ... His Death is a gut punch to Free flowing Ideas & differing Views w/ Dialogue in the US which is my understanding of What our Great Nation was originally founded on by Historic Founders of our US Constitution ~
{A Word: Entered today on 9/11 when the US was Horror Attacked by ISIS Terrorists and related to now HAMAS murdering over 2979 US Citizens +
innocent others from US Allied Nations.}
~ ~ ~ 'In Memoriam' of All Fallen ~ ~ ~
......... Elisabeth Matesky .........
Fwd ~ dmg {#17 - 9/11 2025}
That might be your magnum opus, Elisabeth!
Christian,
Partially correct. It was founded on genocide and racism. Kinda makes ya feel warm and fuzzy.
/s
I stand hat-in-hand, Nickie!
As an 'Apostle' of Jascha Heifetz and Nathan Milsein, I am dumbfounded by a Reply of a Nickie McNichols??? I do not know her but I do know it seems important to point out Mr. Heifetz joyfully served our Country throughout WWII, donning the US Army Uniform as Private 1st Class, US Army, Jascha Heifetz, playing over 400 Violin w/Piano Recitals and in many of the most dangerous Theatre's of War in The South Pacific and did so even going against Orders of his overseeing US General, Douglas Mac Arthur, who sent Word to his US Army Private !st Class, Jascha Heifetz he was ordered Not to Play Violin Concerts in the most dangerous Theatre's of WWII even if he, (Heifetz) wished doing so ~ Still The Grand Concert Artist, US Army Jascha Heifetz did go to a very dangerous Theatre of War finding One Lone US Soldier and almost unable to walk hobbling on a Tree Trunk, cum cane, to get to the rained war battlefield to hear his Hero, Heifetz, in monsoon rains and being the Concert Artist he always was, despite the terrible rains told the Lone Wounded hobbling US Soldier he & his Pianist, {Emanuel Bay} would play their complete Concert Programme for his Efforts to hobble with a cane to hear him play with his Pianist, Mr. Bay ~ This, in and of itself distinguished the Artist, Heifetz, as a dedicated US Army Soldier willing to go the extra mile or more to bring some temporary joy to a wounded and badly hurt Soldier ~ Few knew of all this but when studying with Jascha Heifetz in his Original Jascha Heifetz Violin Master Class @USC's Institute for Special Music Studies, subsequently filmed of All 7 of us, Mr. Heifetz told us of his WWII Experiences at an Easter Party he and Mrs. Francis Heifetz, held for all Seven of us when having a lovely Easter Buffet sit down afternoon dinner and in a Heifetz very Relaxed Conversation amongst 'Friends' by then!! All Our filming had finally wrapped and NYC Producer, Nathan Kroll, happy with all 7 Films in our JH Series ... The reason for mentioning this is to clarify my not only Violin and Artist Pupil Studies with Heifetz, but to share his Patriotism to his beloved adopted country of America, having fled his own Country and Birth Place {Vilnius, Lithuania} and w/father travelling a long long way to Europe then by Steam Ship to San Francisco where the Heifetz Family had relatives to help them become accustomed to our American Life, yet further travelling Across the US to NYC, and for the young "Boy Genius" Heifetz proclaimed thusly by Fritz Kreisler in Berlin, prior and at age 11, to then give his JH Carnegie Hall Violin Debut on October 27, 1917, at Aged 16, which due prior word from the fabled Violinists of The Day, Sold Out for the first JH Violin Recital on American Soil which the Famed Critic, George Bernard Shaw, from London, travelled across the Atlantic on steam ship to hear Heifetz, writing a Profound Review in 'the Times' of London after hearing the Genius writing the most fabled Music Review of all History in 'the Times' of London, which was really a Letter and to "Mr. Heifetz" ... {Realise, Jascha Heifetz, was but aged 16, being termed by George Bernard Shaw, of global renown, 'Mr. Heifetz'!!} I am pointing all of this out to add & support my own fidelity to our Nation or Republic having learnt much from Mr. Heifetz's unwavering Loyalty to America and All Things American being a First Driver of an Electric Car and a first Artist to fight the LA Smog by having all of us pose for photographs wearing Gas Masks to make the JH Point that the LA Smog was a true danger to the health of All LA Angelino's residing in the Los Angeles Basin!!! {Photographs with Mr. Heifetz still exist!}
This was not intended to be a slight dive into any political realms but I sense a need to back up my own loyalty to our Country and in so doing sharing USA Fidelity of Jascha Heifetz, and I will also include my private Violin Mentor, Nathan Milstein, in London, UK and for 3.5 years, again privately, at his Chester Square home in London, due having moved from NYC to London later on to find more peace and harmony in their lives whilst still NM concert touring and taking one private "Heifetz Pupil', aka, 'me-self' as his "Guinea Pig Heifetz Pupil with whom he felt he could musically & NM Bowing's technically experiment due having been an Original pupil of Heifetz!" {Direct Quote of Mr. Milstein on Day One, in April of 1969, after my Offering the Chaconne of Bach to Milstein upon his Invitation and Invite to become his JH private pupil!}
I hesitated to say almost anything in my Reply of earlier trying to keep to Violin on Violinist.com Subjects, yet the Topic this time was an unusual description of a Violinist in the Salt Lake City area having been in his words, mistakenly forcibly apprehended by US Utah Gov't Authorities and being asked many questions of How/Why he was a full time resident of Utah, and living a good life as a good known in the community violinist ... What could one say?? Not Much, but to now mention my reasons for this, my little Addendum to my Reply #17 above ... I think it not a good idea to mix political issues with Violin Activities in 'Ordinary Time'~ to borrow a phrase from Catholic Doctrine in the Church for lack of any other word to try or hope to describe my own ignorance ...
As Shakespeare wrote: "All's Well that Ends Well!" I bid all of you adieu for now and hope Mr. Shin gets his Green Card to return to his musical life and all it entails: Making Music!
~ ~ ~ Sincere Heartfelt Wishes on 9/11 ~ ~ ~
.......... Elisabeth Matesky ..........
Fwd ~ dmg {#21 Addendum to #17 on 9/11 2025}
I don't think any of us need feel any guilt about the past history of our country, only for what it's currently doing and who we voted for.
Ray Weaver wrote:
"you were not sent to another continent in the dead of night."
_____________________________________
Ray, while I personally was not, a lot of other people from my era were, against their will, and these were not people who were here illegally, but full US citizens.
We were involved in something called the Vietnam War. We had something called the draft. Sheesh, kids today!
Nickie McNichols wrote:
"It was founded on genocide and racism. Kinda makes ya feel warm and fuzzy."
__________________________________
Nickie, I don't think that's quite accurate. While it's true that these things have been present in US society, they are not among the founding principles mentioned in either the Declaration of Independence or the US Constitution (although the original constitution did have some laws applying to slavery). Slavery in North America pre-existed the formation of the US, and once the US became a nation, individual states started to outlaw it right away. Off the top of my head, I think it was New York which did that the fastest... within the first year. Other states followed, but it took about 80 years (and a lot of bloodshed) until it was illegal in the entire United States.
Oddly enough, slavery in the American Colonies was first formally legalized or sanctioned under British law when an African-American man traveled to England and petitioned for the right to own slaves. He was successful. This isn't to say that non-sanctioned slavery had not already been going on for a long time.
(Correction: Vermont was the first state to abolish slavery, although I don't think it had formally become a state yet. It was still an "independent republic" at that time)
The issue of slavery was at the center of how our constitution was written. The founding fathers disregarding their own stated feelings about slavery, chose the need to set up a national government over morality . (in the case of Jefferson, Washington and many others, it also served there own financial interests.) I am sure we have our own blind spots at this time that people will look back and judge us on.
They deferred dealing with it later which, in large part, led to the slaughter of the Civil War.
And part of their gift was the Electoral College, an anti-democratic institution. (And let's be real, the Constitution in the beginning was meant to protect the rights of wealthy, white landowners, not the hoi polloi. (most us). Which makes the current Supreme Courts adherence to "originalist" doctrine absurd, and obscene.
Matthew, agreed. The founding fathers believed that there was little chance of a rebellion succeeding unless they could get enough states and a large enough population on board. So compromises and concessions were made to get things off the ground.
The "from sea to shining sea" ambition came along later, and some decidedly sketchy things occurred in order to get that to happen. This was an era when colonialism and conquest were still somewhat fashionable, or at least widely tolerated (by the side which prevailed).
The native Americans might have been much better off had they not been overwhelmed by huge numbers of those darned immigrants! ;-)
I added my signature to the petition last week when this post went up. I’m still optimistic that the case will work out in Mr. Shin’s favor. This man doesn’t at all sound to me like he could be a threat to our country. I’d say he should stay.
I’ve followed the immigration issue since before the turn of the century. I concur with President Trump’s position on this subject: “We want people to come into our country. But they have to come legally.” Mr. Shin DID come legally.
Now that we once again have a secure border - at least that’s what I’ve heard - we can better concentrate on keeping “the worst of the worst” out in the first place - and bringing in, lawfully, those who will be an asset to America. This should help us clean up the mess brought on by open-border policies of past administrations, both Democrat and Republican; and it should help relieve the overwhelmed legal system. The immigrant heritage we Americans value is something we’ve built over the decades through lawful entry, not border-crashing.
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September 9, 2025 at 06:16 PM · Thank you. A compelling narrative of what is apparently not only acceptable, but supported by many in the new reality of our country.