Government lawyers told a federal judge on Wednesday that the Trump government is planning to deport a Harvard scientist to Russia, a country that she fled in 2022, despite her fear that she will be arrested there during her protest against the Russian war in Ukraine.
Kseniia Petrova, a researcher at the Harvard Medical School, has been detained in a detention of the immigration of Louisiana Since February, when she was held at Boston airport because she had not explained any scientific monsters that she was wearing in her luggage.
This is the first time that the government has formally declared its plan to deport her to Russia.
In the hearing on Wednesday, Christina Reiss, the main judge of the United States court in Vermont, interviewed the government lawyers about their grounds for canceling the visa of Mrs. Petrova and holding her. Judge Reiss then started planning a bail hearing on 28 May, making it possible to be the scene for the release of Mrs. Petrova.
The case has attracted the attention of elite scientists around the world and has sent a cold by the community of international academics who surrounded Mrs Petrova in Harvard. Several dozens of Harvard students and faculty made the ride to Burlington, vt., For the hearing.
“For every person they hold, thousands of others will be afraid of coming to the country,” said Leo Gerdén, one Harvard Senior from Sweden.
Mrs. Petrova was held on 16 February at Logan Airport when she returned from vacation in France, with her parts of Kikkerembryos from a affiliated laboratory, at the request of her supervisor at Harvard.
She admitted that she did not explain the samples, but her lawyer argued that this would usually be treated as a small violation, punishable with a fine. Instead, the customs officer on the spot has canceled the J-1 visa of Mrs. Petrova and started deportation procedures.
When Mrs. Petrova explained that she had fled her native Russia for political reasons and could not return there, she was processed as an asylum seeker and was sent to the Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, LA, where she left for almost three months.
In comments from the bank, Judge Reiss seemed skeptical that the customs agent of the airport had had the authority to cancel the visa of Mrs. Petrova.
“Where is that authority?” she asked. “Where is a customs and border patrol officer Does the authority in itself have to withdraw a visa? “She said.” It must be somewhere. Because there is no way to have a kind of unlimited determination. “
The judge noted that she had assessed the statute that the site had set out for customs officers to find someone who is inadmissible to the United States, and “I don’t see anything about customs violations.”
Jeffrey M. Hartman, a lawyer who represents the Ministry of Justice, said: “It is the authority of the State Secretary” to cancel a visa and that the secretary has delegated that authority to customs officials.
Judge Reiss asked the government to clarify whether she was planning to deport Mr Petrova to Russia.
“You ask for her removal to Russia?” she asked.
“Yes, lender,” Mr. Hartman replied.
Mrs Petrova’s lawyer submitted a petition with her detention to the federal court in February, when she was held briefly in a detention center in Vermont before she was transferred to the Immigration Detention Center in Louisiana.
Mr. Hartman argued that the federal court had no jurisdiction about the detention of Mrs. Petrova. He said that Mrs. Petrova may dispute her detention, but only in an immigration court of Louisiana.
“It’s not something that a court can entertain,” he said. “We think that the right location for that question is Louisiana, where she is being held and where her keeper is.”
“But she is only held there because you have moved her,” the judge said.
Mr. Hartman said that when Mrs. Petrova was asked if she was wearing biological materials, that she “did not announce their full content” and “a bag with loose bottles of this experimental material”.
“The CBP office was our first line of defense against unknown biological materials from a strange subject from a port of arrival,” he said.
In recent weeks, federal courts in Vermont have taken over a series of decisions that prefer non -citizen academics who have been overtaken in the immigration content of President Trump.
On May 9, Tufts Doctoraat Student Rumeysa Ozturk was released from detention By order of a judge, William K. Sessions III, who said that her continuous detention could relax “the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens.”
And on April 30, Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford Order the release Van Mohsen Mahdawi, a student organizer at Columbia University who was held by immigration authorities during an interview for his naturalization. Both Mrs. Ozturk and Mr. Mahdawi were selected because they had protested the military campaign of Israel in Gaza vocally.
Mrs Petrova’s case has no clear basis in any political activism. But the attorney general of Massachusetts, Andrea Joy Campbell, who has submitted an amicus assignment in the case, said that the detention of Mrs. Petrova, such as that of Mrs. Ozturk, “reckless and cruel abuse of power of power and terrorizing non -citizing members of the academic community.”
Mrs Campbell argued that international students generate considerable income in Massachusetts, and that by creating ‘an atmosphere of fear’, the Trump government has threatened the economy of the state.
Mrs Petrova’s lawyer, Gregory Romanowsky, has argued that customs officials exceeded their authority by withdrawing her visa.
Although in some cases customs officers can stipulate that a person is not -inadmissible, he said, he must identify the legal grounds, such as criminal activities or health problems. He said that it would fail to explain scientific samples that test has not paid.
“It should not make her more inadmissible than cutting for the line when she waited to be inspected,” said Mr Romanowsky. “What the government does is say:” If you are an immigrant or a non -citizen and you are not on your best behavior, we will punish you. We will use different immigration provisions to get rid of you. ” “
Adam Sychla, a postgraduate researcher who organized a group of about 20 Harvard students and faculty members who traveled from Cambridge to the courthouse in Burlington, said he had never met Mrs. Petrova, but had immediately decided to make the drive.
“Whether I know her personally or not, is not important,” he added. “I could easily have met her last week to start a collaboration. Instead, Kseniia is held unfairly.”
Miles J. Herszenhorn has contributed to reporting from Cambridge, Mass.
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