A Harvard University scientist detained by immigration authorities for over three months was granted bail by a federal judge Wednesday in a rebuke to the Trump administration.
U.S. District Judge Christina Reiss ruled that Kseniia Petrova’s detention and the revocation of her J-1 visa for failing to declare frog embryos at Boston’s Logan Airport in February should not have happened, and raised serious legal concerns.
“There does not seem to be either a factual or legal basis for the immigration officer’s actions,” Reiss said in her ruling, adding that the samples Petrova brought into the U.S. were “wholly non-hazardous, non-toxic, non-living, and posed a threat to no one.”
“Ms. Petrova’s life and well-being are in peril if she is deported to Russia,” Reiss added, which the Trump administration has said it plans to do. Petrova has said that she fears returning to the country due to her protests against the war in Ukraine.
Over three months ago, Petrova arrived back in the U.S. from a vacation in France with frog embryo samples, which she agreed to bring from a laboratory affiliated with her own at the request of her supervisor at Harvard Medical School. When her bags were inspected at the airport, a customs official immediately canceled her visa and began deportation proceedings.
“[W]hat happened in this case was extraordinary and novel,” Reiss said. If she did not take action in Petrova’s case, Reiss said that “there will be no determination” if Petrova’s constitutional rights were violated.
Petrova was recruited from Russia in 2023 to work at Harvard’s Kirschner Lab, studying the earliest stages of cell development as part of the lab’s work to find ways to repair cell damage that leads to diseases such as cancer. She has admitted to failing to declare the embryo samples, and her lawyer says that this would normally be punished with a minor fine.
Petrova still may not be released, as she also faces felony charges in Massachusetts for allegedly smuggling the embryos into the U.S., and is currently in federal custody in Louisiana. For now, though, Reiss’s ruling is another rebuke to an administration that is trying to fast-track mass deportations of immigrants while ignoring the law.
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