How Frog Embryos Landed a Scientist in ICE Detention
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Yes, hello. Ksenia, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us again. My name is Jess. Appreciate you doing this. It sounds like it's pretty crazy over there. How are you? Yeah, hello. Hello, hello. I'm fine. I mean, as much as I can. That's Ksenia Petrova. She's a scientist at Harvard Medical School, studying how cells in the human body rejuvenate themselves.

But right now, Ksenia is trapped. Instead of calling from her lab in Massachusetts, she's calling from an immigration detention center in Louisiana. You said you're in your dorm?

see a lot of people behind you. Yes. Oh, yeah. Okay. You can hear, you can see. So this is a room where all our life is currently is happening. So it's a big, big room. You can see all the part of it and I can, if I remove my face,

I spoke with Ksenia over a video call. She was in a big room made of metal and concrete, filled with rows of bunk beds. Behind Ksenia, I could just make out dozens of people milling around, all seeming to wear the same khaki jumpsuit. But despite her surroundings, Ksenia seemed in good spirits, laughing nervously. I asked her what life was like in detention.

The food is absolutely terrible. It's very, very unhealthy. It's like a really bad quality McDonald's food. The bed is attached to the floor, of course. Every furniture here is screwed to the floor. In the corner, we have our toilets, like bath space. There are toilets and shower.

And the toilets are half open, so if you're standing there, half of you will be visible. Wow. It's like a life with 90 people in the same room. It's very noisy all the time. It's really hard to concentrate. It's hard to sleep sometimes. It's hard to think. You can't belong to yourself. You're always... Somebody is watching you.

For the last two months, Ksenia has been in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. And what led her there was something that normally would have resulted in a fine. Instead, her work visa was taken away, she was detained, and now Ksenia's future is in the hands of an immigration court. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Tuesday, April 22nd.

Coming up on the show, how a customs dispute landed a world-class scientist in ICE detention.

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The only thing which I really enjoy in my life is science and this is what I was dedicated to and I was spending almost all my time in the lab and I was interested in biology and I would like to become a good scientist someday. Not yet, but this is what I was trying to achieve.

Ksenia Petrova is 30 years old. She was born in Russia, a graduate of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. She's a specialist in bioinformatics, a discipline that uses both computers and math to analyze biological data. That skill set can be hard to come by in the U.S. And in 2023, Ksenia was offered a job at Harvard Medical School in a lab in the systems biology department.

Ksenia moved to the U.S. on a J-1 visa, which allows foreigners to conduct research here. And Ksenia got to work studying frog cells. Xenopus is a type of frog native to sub-Saharan Africa.

Their cells are very useful to scientists like Ksenia. Their similarity to human cells make them perfect specimens for studying diseases, genes and aging. But we also are thinking to use it as a model to study aging and to study germ cell development. So this was our point of interest.

For the past two years, Ksenia has been devoted to her work at the lab in Boston. Her boss said that he'd have to beg her to go home after work. But earlier this year, in February, Ksenia decided to take a break by going to Paris to see a concert. I was maybe working too much and I realized that my brain is very tired and they can't. And I decided to go on vacation and

I went to see a very beautiful pianist who was performing in Paris. And I enjoyed it so much. After this concert, I really don't want to go to any other concerts because they won't be as good as this concert was. Even on vacation, Ksenia couldn't help getting some work done. Her boss at Harvard had arranged for Ksenia to visit a lab in Paris. The lab had figured out a new way to prepare Xenopus frog embryos for study.

Ksenia hoped she could learn this new technique and maybe even bring back some samples to Boston. Sometimes it's very, very important to know exactly how the procedure is made by the person who is making it. And I learned a lot and I was very, very grateful to them. And we prepared very beautiful samples, which I was hoping to bring back. Right. But it didn't happen.

At the end of her trip, Ksenia packed those samples into her luggage, and she headed for Boston Logan Airport, frog embryos in tow. When she landed in the U.S., Ksenia went through passport control, showed her visa, and was admitted into the country. And then she went to pick up her bags.

The officer, from Customs and Border Protection, led Ksenia to another room to inspect her luggage.

And they were looking through my bag and they took out the samples and they were asking me all the questions about the samples, what are they from, what kind of species are these animals, what are they for. And I was answering all the questions and the officers were very polite. They were trying really to figure out what is going on and why I brought the samples.

As she was being questioned, Ksenia says another customs officer came in and took over her luggage inspection. That was when things took a turn.

She was without uniform, she didn't tell me her name and what is her job and occupation. She just again started asking me the same questions and other questions, many, many questions, not in very polite form. And after this investigation, which she made, she told me that my visa is cancelled.

Ksenia's visa was revoked, and suddenly she was stuck in immigration limbo, all because of those frog embryos. Under the law, what she did should result in a $500 fine. That's our colleague Michelle Hackman. She covers immigration and has been following a recent rise in cases where visa holders end up in detention.

I became obsessed with this case because in a lot of instances that I had been learning about, there seemed to be like, you know, violations that were relatively minor, which was the case here too, but were sort of understandable. And you have this woman, she's a scientist, she's at the top of her field. And what she did was pretty minor. She made a mistake that you and I could make.

But I've spoken to several lawyers about this case, and they've all made the same point, which is that this really shouldn't rise to the level of you've committed some kind of crime. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said Ksenia was detained after, quote, lying to federal officers about carrying substances into the country. The spokesperson referred to messages found on Ksenia's phone as evidence that she, quote, knowingly broke the law and took deliberate steps to evade it.

Ksenia and her lawyer deny those allegations. After her visa was revoked, customs officers told Ksenia that she could ask for a new visa at the U.S. Embassy back in Paris. And then they asked her a question that Michelle says is not part of the normal protocol. Would you like us to let the Russian government know that you're here? Ksenia, that was the point where she said, oh my gosh, please don't do that. You know, it's not safe for me in Russia. Why isn't Russia safe for Ksenia? When Russia invaded Ukraine...

Ksenia got involved in politics. She started protesting, and she got arrested by the Russian authorities. And when she got out of jail, she realized that her, you know, she wasn't safe in Russia. And so she essentially fled. Ksenia had left Russia back in 2022. She was hired by Harvard a year later. So when the customs officer said they'd alert the Russian embassy, Ksenia panicked.

And when she said that, that triggered an asylum claim. When you say triggered an asylum claim, is that a vocal thing you just say? You can't go back to where you're from and some machinery in the government is set in motion? That's basically right. Yeah, an asylum claim can be as simple as

You can't send me home. I will be targeted. You have to prove it, of course, but that's how it starts.

And after that she said to me that I will be passed to ICE. And they put me in a cell in the airport for one night. And they didn't tell me anything about what will happen to me, what is going on. They didn't tell anybody. So after this I was transferred to the detention in Louisiana. And I'm here almost two months. So this is how it happened.

After the break, what's next for Ksenia's case?

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While Ksenia is in detention, she's getting to know her fellow detainees. They spend their time playing chess and talking about their asylum cases. I mean, we just think to, I don't know, to keep ourselves in, I don't know, mind condition. Some of Ksenia's new friends are also Russian. She told me about them as a guard shouted in the background. No, put it in your pocket.

So my closest friends have a similar story. They came from Russia. There is no way for them to go to Russia back because they are afraid to be persecuted there. And they decided to come to the border and to come to CBP, saying that they are seeking for political asylum. And there they were arrested.

And after this, they were transferred to different detentions. Then they were transferred again and again. And now they are all here. Well, I'm glad you at least have friends while you're there. Yes. I mean, it's a good luck and bad luck. Ksenia and her friends are waiting to plead their cases for asylum before an immigration judge.

And Ksenia is not allowed to leave detention while waiting for a court date. The policy is part of the Trump administration's harsher stance on asylum seekers and an expanded definition of who can be detained. But unlike her other friends in the Louisiana detention center, Ksenia already had a visa. And her visa was revoked over the dispute at customs. Michelle says many cases like Ksenia's are now popping up across the country.

There are a lot of cases of people being stopped coming into the country at airports and at land borders. And usually there is something. Maybe they've done wrong. Maybe they filled out their paperwork wrong or they violated their terms of their visa in some way, even if it's unintentional. Stuff that, you know, it's not like they're being targeted for absolutely no reason. But the consequences seem much huger. In the past, you know,

immigration officers at the border are given the authority to say, okay, I'm going to let you in today, but you need to come back next week and fix your paperwork. Or, you know, even in a worst case, I'm going to actually revoke your visa and I'm going to release you today, but you're going to have to come to a court date in a few weeks. And now it's like a maximum, you know, once there's even a tiny problem, you are in detention or you're being deported as fast as possible.

Have you talked to other folks on work visas or any other kind of sort of temporary visa? Many. Like, yeah, what are they saying? How do they feel when they hear about cases like Ksenia's? This case has sent...

shockwaves through the scientific community. People are freaked out by it. People are afraid to leave the country. Scientists are afraid to come to the country. People are terrified. I mean, people feel like anything they do that's wrong, even inadvertently, could be held against them. They could be thrown out of the country. There have been a lot of instances of people's phones being searched and contents of their phones being held against them, even things they've deleted off their phones.

You know, there was a case of someone recently who was literally detained at his citizenship interview. So I think all of these cases, and this is totally deliberate by the administration, they're using these sort of

aggressive tactics that we haven't seen so much in the past to paint a picture that if you do anything wrong or if you're here illegally, even if you are here legally and, you know, we sort of don't like some of your speech or we don't like something you've done, you could be deported. I mean, I think part of this is that they actually want people to leave and they're hoping that these tactics will get people to leave. But for asylum seekers, leaving can be really complicated.

Because Ksenia is afraid to go back to her home country, she has to see her asylum case through, a process that's likely to take a very long time. And while she waits, she's stuck in detention. Today, after two months in ICE custody, Ksenia had her first appearance before an immigration judge. So you said she's awaiting the results of her asylum case. What are sort of the hypotheticals there, the outcomes? I mean, she could win her asylum case.

which would mean essentially she's free unless the government appeals, she could lose her asylum case. In which case, you know, it's hard to say what the range of possibilities is. Theoretically, you should be able to appeal that loss all the way up through the system and then through the federal courts. But if she's in detention, the government could try to deport her in the meantime.

In other words, she could get deported while her asylum case moves through the courts. So Ksenia's fighting to be released on parole, which could protect her from deportation until her case is decided. In a post on X, an assistant secretary at DHS said that Ksenia broke the law and was lawfully detained. She added, quote, we should know who and what is in our country. Ksenia's allies argue that she's not a threat. She's just a scientist.

Ksenia, what are you worried will happen if you're sent back to Russia? So if I will be sent back to Russia, I'm of course worried that I will be arrested and imprisoned because of my political opinion. And I won't have any chance to get out of jail there until the regime changes or until Putin dies because

And right now, Ksenia is deeply uncertain that the U.S. is even an option for her anymore.

I mean of course it makes me afraid feeling like I'm not really welcome here feeling that everything can happen to me and America is not really interested to help me I feel less safe than I was feeling before

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