Harvard researchers in custody due to smuggling from frogemryos
Harvard researchers in custody due to smuggling from frogemryos
A US district judge in Vermont decided that Kseniia Petrova School, which is accused of smuggling frog bryoses, could be released against deposit from the care of the immigration authority ICE. However, Petrova is still in custody in custody until the upcoming deposit hearing due to criminal charges.
charges and allegations
The 30-year-old Petrova was arrested on February 16 at the Logan International Airport in Boston and held on to immigration and customs by the US authorities. The deposit hearing took place on Wednesday in the Federal Supreme Court in Burlington, Vermont, in front of Chief District Judge Christina Reiss, but Petrova took part in a facility in Louisiana via zoom in which she is imprisoned.
Petrova is one of the many foreign scientists whose visas were revoked under Trump as part of a tightening of deportation policy. She faces Russia before the deportation, where her lawyers state that she must be afraid of persecution due to her political commitment to war in Ukraine.
claims of the defense
"Ms. Petrova has submitted convincing evidence of the inappropriate behavior of the government - including attempts to put them in prison and punish them because of a minor customs violation", wrote their lawyers to the court in a brief. "If ICE is arrested again, there is a significant and well -founded risk that it will be deported to Russia illegally - despite her earlier political persecution there."
According to the indictment, Petrova had failed to declare the biological materials and lied to the federal authorities officers when she went through customs control at the airport. During a search, the officers found the forbidden materials, although Petrova stated that they had no such thing. Messages were also found on Petrova's cell phone that showed that colleagues warned of the need to comply with the correct regulations when transporting materials.experiences in custody
"I was told that this would usually be punished with a warning or a fine. Instead, my visa was revoked and I came to a deportation center in Louisiana, where I had spent the past three months with about 100 other women. We live in a room with sleeping room in a sleeping hall," wrote Petrova in an essay this month in the New York Times was published.
additional charges
In an unusual escalation, Petrova, who has been fighting against the deportation since her arrest, was also struggling against the deportation procedure, this month also because of serious smuggling allegations accused in Massachusetts. The US Prosecutor in Massachusetts, Leah Foley, said Petrova lied to the officers about the presence of biological materials in her luggage.
"The rule of law is no exception for educated people with a corresponding background," said Foley in a recorded video Extract . "The US visa that Ms. Petrova has received and that the customs authorities canceled due to their behavior is a privilege, not a right."
The way back to the laboratory
Although Petrova admits that she failed to declare the frog samples, her lawyer Gregory Romanovsky said that the incident at the airport should be treated as a slight violation and that a fine should have been punished. Instead, her visa was immediately revoked and she was detained what her lawyer describes as an attack by the government.
After the new charges became known, a federal judge ordered the transfer from Petrova to Massachusetts. Her lawyer submitted an application for adhesion and deposit in Vermont, where she was recorded after her first detention before she was transferred to Louisiana. In the court documents it is stated that lawyers of the Ministry of Justice argue that Petrova's deposit applications should be considered irrelevant because ICE was transferred to the Richwood prison in Monroe, Louisiana.
"Ms. Petrova is not in direct prison in one of the accused, who were mentioned in their original application for prison examination, and their contestation of their previous immigration is irrelevant," wrote the government's lawyers in the brief.
In her answer, Petrova's lawyers accuse the government of exaggerating the criminal charges in order to prevent their deposit application and their applications from being heard in the Federal Supreme Court. "The government should not be encouraged to raise criminal charges against ICE prisoners in order to undermine their applications for prison examination. This is particularly important, since the government's position says that the arrest was already under criminal charges-whether real or pretended-would be sufficient to make an application for an ICE prisoner," wrote Petrova's lawyers.Petrova is eager to get back to her laboratory, where she uses a unique microscope that fulfills the "almost impossible" task of measuring certain tissue samples without damaging it. She described this development as "completely revolutionary" - and one that could support research on diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's. "There is a data record that I have finished half. I want to go home and complete it," wrote Petrova.
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