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Updated May 15, 2025, at 3:16 p.m.
Government lawyers said the Trump administration plans to deport Kseniia Petrova, a Harvard Medical School researcher detained by Customs and Border Protection officials in February, back to Russia at a Wednesday hearing.
According to The New York Times, the lawyers said at the hearing — held in Vermont — that the government would move to deport Petrova to Russia despite concerns that it would be dangerous for her to return to the country, where she was arrested in 2022 for protesting Russia’s war in Ukraine. Gregory Romanovsky, her attorney, said returning to the country would be “suicide” for Petrova in a March interview with The Crimson.
Two days earlier, on Monday, the government filed criminal smuggling charges against Petrova in federal district court in Massachusetts. The smuggling charges in Massachusetts were unsealed by a judge on Wednesday, the same day as the Vermont hearing. If the charges hold, Petrova could face up to 20 years in prison, according to Romanovsky.
CBP officials arrested Petrova at the Boston Logan International Airport in February for allegedly failing to declare frog embryos she was attempting to bring back into the country from a trip to France for her research. She was later detained at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Louisiana.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Christina Reiss, the judge of the United States District Court in Vermont, scheduled a bail hearing on May 28. Reiss expressed skepticism that the CBP officials had had the authority to cancel Petrova’s visa, the Times reported.
Two hours after Reiss set the bail hearing, Petrova was transferred from the ICE facility where she has been held for months to criminal custody, Romanovsky wrote in a Thursday morning statement to The Crimson.
“This is not a coincidence,” Romanovsky wrote. “It is an attempt by the government to justify its outrageous and legally indefensible position that this scientist working for the U.S. on cures for cancer and aging research has somehow become a danger to the community.”
Petrova requested to be transferred to Massachusetts, where the criminal smuggling charges were made, and is expected to be moved there in the next few weeks, according to another statement from Romanovsky sent Thursday afternoon.
Petrova’s case has drawn public condemnation, including from 17 U.S. senators and Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea J. Campbell, and has become a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s threats to international faculty and students at Harvard and nationwide. Campbell filed an amicus brief in support of Petrova on Tuesday that called for her immediate release.
Petrova, who holds a visa that allows her to remain temporarily in Europe, asked CBP officers in February to allow her to return to France. Instead, the officers questioned her and initiated expedited removal proceedings against her.
She has challenged her detention through her lawyer, who filed a habeas corpus petition on her behalf and an asylum petition which held that Petrova has a “well-founded fear of future persecution” if she returned to Russia.
Earlier this month, Petrova also denied lying to authorities about the contents of her suitcase in a statement. She claimed she was admitted with her J-1 scholar visa and received an admission stamp in her passport, and that officials never asked if she had any “biological material” with her.
“Some of my words were misunderstood and inaccurately reflected in the statement that the officer presented for my signature,” Petrova wrote.
A Department of Homeland Security disputed Petrova’s claim in a statement to The Crimson at the time, asserting that she was “lying to federal officers.”
In an affidavit in support of the criminal smuggling charges, filed Monday, an ICE agent claimed that Petrova was asked by a CBP officer whether she knew she was supposed to declare biological materials upon arriving in the United States. She allegedly said she was unsure.
The officer then opened several text messages on Petrova’s phone in which a colleague and her lab’s principal investigator asked her what her plans were for taking the frog embryos through customs, according to the affidavit. Petrova allegedly responded to her PI by writing that she had no plan.
“I won’t be able to swallow them,” she joked in the text message, according to the affidavit.
Romanovsky disputed the claim that Petrova needed a permit for her frog embryos, writing that customs experts had told him that she “did not need a permit to bring in her non-living scientific samples that are not considered biological material under U.S. Customs law.”
“Yesterday’s hearing in federal district court in Vermont confirmed that Customs and Border Patrol officials had no legal basis for cancelling Kseniia’s visa and detaining her,” he wrote.
—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.
—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.
