From a lab at Harvard to an immigration cell, Kseniia Petrova’s journey started with frogs.
Chemical engineer from Russia working as a researcher at Harvard Medical School did not report the “safe” frog eggs she brought back to the US from France in February, according to Petrova’s lawyer. Instead of giving Petrova a fine, her exchange visitor visa was cancelled, and she was jailed.
Greg Romanovsky, Petrova’s lawyer, said that taking away her visa was “a punishment grossly disproportionate to the situation.” He also said that the mistake on the customs form was “inadvertent.”
When CNN asked the Department of Homeland Security for comment, they didn’t respond. But the department told ABC News that “messages found on (Petrova’s) phone revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them.”
ICE records show that Petrova is currently being held in a detention centre in Louisiana while she waits for a hearing on June 9. If the hearing goes well, Petrova could be sent back to Russia, where her lawyer says she would be arrested right away for speaking out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Romanovsky said, “Her detention is not only unnecessary, it is also unfair.”
CNN has confirmed that more than 340 students, faculty, and researchers have had their visas taken away this year by looking at court documents, statements from lawyers, and news releases from dozens of universities and colleges across the country.
Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the State Department had taken back more than 300 visas. Most of these were student visas.
The first high-profile cases were mostly about people who were suspected of supporting terrorist groups. For example, Mahmoud Khalil was arrested after pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University.
Immigration lawyers say that more and more student deportation threats involve taking away visas for relatively small crimes, like misdemeanours that happened years ago, or for no reason at all.
Foreigners with ties to well-known American universities are being targeted as part of the Trump administration’s bigger crackdown on immigration. For example, the administration says it has the power to label some migrants as gang members and deport them without a hearing.
Immigration law has all of these tools that have been used before, but they are used in a way that causes mass panic, hysteria, and confusion so that students won’t get good legal advice and will just leave the country. This is what Jeff Joseph, president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said.