Kseniia Petrova sat on the cold concrete floor of the Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, Louisiana. Three months had passed since she was detained here. Three months since a simple mistake – failing to declare scientific samples – had turned her life upside down. Every night at midnight, when the lights were switched off, her phone fell silent. Her friend and colleague Will Trim, a biologist from her lab at Harvard Medical School, played the piano. Bach, Chopin, anything that might soothe her. The music comforted her until the phone call abruptly ended after 15 minutes.
Petrova, a Russian scientist, had fled her homeland after protesting Russia’s war in Ukraine. In her home country, she was persecuted as an opponent of the regime, but in the United States, she was supposed to feel safe – until she landed at Logan Airport in Boston.
Tomorrow, on May 14, her case will be heard in court. We will be on site. Judge Christina Reiss at the U.S. District Court in Vermont will hear the arguments. Petrova's lawyers argue that her detention was arbitrary and unlawful.
Her work at Harvard Medical School was highly complex, unique. She was the only one in her lab with the technical skills to analyze data from a specialized microscope – a device capable of visualizing fat cells that were invisible under conventional microscopes. A life of science, destroyed by a single entry.
In February, she had returned from France to Boston. Her lab director, Leon Peshkin, had asked her to bring samples of frog embryos from the Institut Curie in Paris – samples that were often damaged during shipping. The embryos were fixed, embedded in paraffin, chemically treated. In Petrova's eyes, they were harmless – inanimate material incapable of transmitting any disease. But the officers of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) saw it differently.
At the baggage carousel at Logan Airport, she was stopped. A detection dog signaled, and the officers found the samples. They asked Petrova if she had declared them. She said no, believing it was unnecessary. Her visa was revoked. She was asked if she wanted to enter the United States. And when she explained that she was afraid to return to Russia, the nightmare began.
What followed was a journey through the labyrinth of U.S. immigration bureaucracy. Instead of being sent back to France, Petrova was handed over to ICE custody. First to Vermont, then to Louisiana, to a prison run by a private company – a cold, dark place far from the sterile labs she once worked in.
Her lawyer argues that the Trump administration violated its own rules. Normally, undeclared scientific samples are confiscated, and a fine is imposed. But Petrova was detained, treated like a criminal. Homeland Security claimed she had lied to the officers. But to her supporters, she was the victim of a system that viewed scientific exchange with suspicion and severity.
Her story spread. Scientists, senators, and civil rights advocates spoke out. An open letter signed by 17 U.S. senators demanded her release. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell warned that Petrova’s case sent a “chilling signal” to international students.
Petrova herself remained trapped in the cold darkness of the prison. Her only companion was darkness without light, and the only warmth came from the few words she heard through the prison phone. “I know he’s worried about me,” she said about Trim, who played for her every night. “Maybe I should be stronger.”
But even Trim lost hope. “After three months, the music doesn’t sing anymore if she doesn’t call,” he said.
Now Petrova’s case goes to court. Her lawyers argue it is a violation of the fundamental principles of fairness. Her life, her career – all hanging by a thread, stretched between the cold walls of a prison and the glass dome of a laboratory.
In the United States, a country that once attracted the brightest minds in the world, the case of Kseniia Petrova shows another face: a face of fear, of isolation, of harshness. A face that scientists and researchers around the world recognize – and fear.
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