Raheem J. KassamIN BRIEF.
❓What Happened: A Russian scientist was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after undeclared frog embryo samples were found in her luggage. She claims her anti-war views will have her killed in her native Russia if she is forced to return.👥 Who’s Involved: Kseniya Petrova, a Russian scientist from Harvard Medical School; Cora Anderson, Petrova’s friend and colleague; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Petrova’s boss, Leon Peshkin.
📍 Where & When: Boston Logan International Airport, February 16. Petrova was initially held in Vermont and later moved to a facility in Louisiana.
💬 Key Quote: “Despite having lawyers and the fact she did not do anything illegal in the first place, she is still there, and we have no idea when she will be paroled,” claimed Cora Anderson, her friend, on Facebook.
⚠️ Impact: A newly invigorated and strict border control operation under the Trump administration is showing the world it will not tolerate law-breaking.
IN FULL.
A Russian scientist affiliated with Harvard Medical School has been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after returning from a trip to France. Kseniya Petrova was stopped at Boston Logan International Airport on February 16, according to a Facebook post by her friend and colleague, Cora Anderson.Authorities revoked Petrova’s visa and intended to return her to France, from whence she came, though anti-Trump activists online have since claimed that the U.S. government was planning to deport her to Russia to be persecuted by Putin’s regime.
Petrova and her allies claim she cannot return to her mother country because she opposed the Ukraine war and called for Putin to be impeached. But, per the Harvard Crimson, if Petrova is indeed deported, it would be to France.
“She currently holds a Schengen visa, which allows her to stay in countries in the European Union’s Schengen area for up to 90 days within a 180-day period,” they reported.
Petrova’s assertion of being unsafe in Russia triggered an asylum claim, leading to her detention before trial on May 7. This has been labeled a stint in the “gulag,” by Trump immigration critics.
But Petrova’s apprehension is linked to the discovery of undeclared frog embryo samples in her luggage, which her friend, Andrei Shevtsov, told the Russian news outlet Agentstvo about. Another colleague suggested a possible error on Petrova’s customs declaration form.
Petrova’s boss at the Harvard Medical School, Leon Peshkin, said she had protested the invasion of Ukraine and called for Vladimir Putin’s impeachment before fleeing Russia. Peskhkin also appeared to take responsibility for her detention per The Guardian:
Peshkin said that Petrova was a highly skilled researcher – “she is spectacular, the best I’ve ever seen in 20 years at Harvard,” – and had a visa that enabled her to work in the US and travel abroad freely. In February, however, when she was in Paris on vacation, her boss “made a huge mistake”. He asked her to pick up a box of frog embryo samples from colleagues in France and bring them back to the lab at Harvard.
The National Pulse has exclusively learned from sources close to the case that Petrova reportedly lied to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, saying she had nothing to declare. A K9 inspection revealed loose vials and Petri dishes containing unknown substances. Petrova later admitted to having embryonic frog cells in her possession, none of which had any permits.
Furthermore, The National Pulse understands that a search of Petrova’s phone revealed messages that told how she planned to try to get past customs without declaring anything, knowingly evading the law.
The National Pulse contacted Harvard Medical School for comment but received no response by the time of publication.
Petrova was a bioinformatician at the Moscow Center for Genetics from 2016–2023, before working for Quantori, a U.S.-based company in Georgia (2021–2022), and the Institute of Gene Biology in Moscow (2023–2024), focusing on population genetics. Currently, she is a research assistant at Harvard Medical School, conducting embryology-related research in a lab.
Initially taken to Vermont, Petrova was subsequently transferred to a detention facility in Louisiana, where she shares a space with around 80 other female detainees. Anderson conveyed via social media that Petrova remains in custody.
