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The woman is being held in a Louisiana detention facility while waiting for her next hearing.
Harvard researcher Kseniia Petrova was detained as she returned from Paris. Family photo
A Russian scientist at Harvard Medical School was detained by ICE in February after she failed to declare frog embryos at customs.
According to a statement from her lawyer, Gregory Romanovsky, Kseniia Petrova has been a foreign scholar conducting biomedical research at Harvard on a J-1 visa since May 2023.
When she returned from a trip abroad on Feb. 16, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer at Logan International Airport discovered that Petrova had not completed the required customs paperwork for a “non-hazardous scientific sample” she was transporting from an affiliated lab in France.
Under U.S. customs laws, CBP can seize the item and issue a fine, Romanovsky said. Instead, CBP canceled Petrova’s visa and detained her.
Romanovsky said CBP transferred her custody to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Petrova is at Richwood Detention Facility in Lousiana, 1,500 miles away from her home in Boston and immigration counsel.
“Rather than imposing the appropriate monetary penalties for the customs violation, CBP improperly invoked their extensive immigration authority to impose a punishment grossly disproportionate to the situation,” Romanovsky said.
Petrova’s situation is “especially dire,” according to Romanovsky, because the U.S. government is seeking to deport her to Russia, where she faces the threat of arrest due to her prior political activism and “outspoken opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
Romanovsky said that the month-and-a-half of detention has caused “significant disruption” to her professional and personal life.
“As a dedicated and highly respected researcher, her work is critical to scientific progress,” he said.
Romanovsky urged ICE to release Petrova while her legal proceedings continue.
“We will continue to monitor this situation closely and will advocate tirelessly for the fair and equitable treatment of Ms. Petrova,” he said.
A Harvard University spokesperson confirmed that Petrova is a paid research associate at Harvard Medical School, saying, “We are monitoring this situation.”
A GoFundMe page set up to support Petrova from her friends has raised over $40,000.
In a message, Petrova’s friends say she is a “talented computer scientist” who has “worked hard” and lived in the U.S. for over two years.
Her friends set up the fundraiser to help pay Petrova’s rent, groceries, utilities, and anticipated legal expenses as she awaits probation and applies for a new work visa.
Petrova’s supervisor at Harvard, Leonid Peshkin, told the The Boston Globe that it is his fault that Petrova picked up more samples while vacationing in France and tried to bring them back to Harvard.
Peshkin told the Globe that the frog embryo samples are used to study how various genes are used in organisms.