A Russian researcher at Harvard Medical School who is being held in a Louisiana detention center for failing to declare frog embryos while passing through customs in Boston says it was shocking when authorities detained her.
“I was shocked completely,” Kseniia Petrova told ABC News from the Louisiana facility where she has been held since February as part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Petrova, a Harvard medical researcher who is in the U.S. on an exchange visitor visa, was detained at an airport in Boston after a Customs and Border Protection officer found “noninfectious and non-toxic frog embryos in her luggage,” a complaint filed by her attorney said.
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Petrova told ABC News that after CBP officers searched her luggage and asked her about the samples, she told them about her research at Harvard and how she was hoping to bring the samples back to her lab.
“I decided it would be more reasonable for us to bring samples back and profile them in our lab in Boston because our lab in Boston was very well-equipped,” Petrova told ABC News. “It would be a great opportunity to bring these samples back and to finish their preparation in our lab in Boston, and to profile them there.”
After the samples were discovered, Petrova said she was pressed for “some time” by immigration officials, after which her phone was confiscated and she was sent to a jail in Vermont. She told ABC News that she wasn’t allowed to contact anybody, and that shortly thereafter she was transferred to a detention center in Louisiana.
“ICE doesn’t tell people — anybody — what will happen to them,” Petrova said. “They didn’t tell me they will transfer me to Louisiana.”
“We don’t know what will happen the next day, what will happen in several hours,” she said.
Petrova’s attorney said the customs violation should have resulted in just a $50 fine.
“Instead, she has been treated as a criminal and held in a remote, overcrowded U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility far from her immigration counsel, colleagues, and friends,” her attorney Gregory Romanovsky said. “During this time, she has been unable to continue her critical medical research.”
In a post to X, Tricia McLaughlin, the Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said that Petrova “lied to federal officers about carrying substances into the country.”
“A K9 inspection uncovered undeclared petri dishes, containers of unknown substances, and loose vials of embryonic frog cells, all without proper permits,” said McLaughlin. “She knowingly broke the law and took deliberate steps to evade it. She was lawfully detained. “
Petrova said she believes her detainment was too harsh.
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“I would like to say that something is completely, completely out of control here,” she told ABC News. “I think my cases was an example of showing how really the system doesn’t work.”
Asked by ABC News what it has been like to be in a detention center for two months, Petrova said she has adapted.
“In the beginning, I was completely shocked — but now I think I’m adapted,” she said, adding that it’s been a surprise to see “all these running immigrants laughing and doing their usual living, their usual life, in this very, very restricted space.”
Petrova said she is trying to be stay positive.
“I’m lucky to have big support from outside and from my dorm mates here,” she said. “So besides the absurdity of what is happening around, we’re trying to keep ourselves positive as much as we can, and to try to make jokes about what is happening here, and not to give up, and not think very deeply about what is happening.”
Petrova has a habeas hearing in U.S. District Court in Vermont, scheduled for May 14.
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