Author: Ellen Barry

For months, the Harvard researcher Kseniia Petrova has challenged efforts to deport her to her native Russia for a customs violation. This week, the government charged her with a criminal felony.Kseniia Petrova, a Harvard researcher from Russia who has been fighting deportation proceedings since February, will now face felony smuggling charges in Massachusetts, a federal judge in Louisiana said on Thursday.Ms. Petrova made a brief court appearance Thursday morning via video from a jail in Monroe, La., near the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center where she has been held for nearly three months.During the hearing, Ms. Petrova listened quietly as U.S. Magistrate Judge Kayla D. McClusky read her the criminal complaint in the smuggling case, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. “Yes, I understand,” she said.After her attorney expressed Ms. Petrova’s desire to be transferred to Massachusetts for further proceedings, Judge McClusky agreed to allow the transfer back to Boston.The smuggling charges against Ms. Petrova came unexpectedly, and legal experts said the decision to bring criminal charges at this stage in an immigration case was unusual.The charges were announced just as Ms. Petrova’s legal challenge to her detention appeared to move in her favor. She was initially detained at the airport in Boston in February, after failing to declare frog embryos that she was carrying into the country at the request of her Harvard supervisor to use as scientific samples.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

A government lawyer told a federal judge on Wednesday that the intention is to deport Kseniia Petrova, a Harvard researcher, to Russia. The Trump administration announced criminal smuggling charges on Wednesday against Kseniia Petrova, a Harvard scientist who was detained three months ago after failing to declare scientific samples she was carrying in her luggage.In a hearing in federal district court earlier in the day, a government lawyer told a federal judge that the Trump administration intends to deport Ms. Petrova back to Russia, a country she fled in 2022, despite her fear that she will be arrested there over her history of political protest.The moves represent an escalation in the government’s case against Ms. Petrova, which in recent weeks has drawn attention from scientists and academics around the world. And it brought the government into conflict with the federal judge in Vermont, which scheduled a bail hearing for Ms. Petrova later this month, apparently setting the stage for her release. Ms. Petrova has admitted that she failed to declare the samples, but her lawyer has argued that this would ordinarily be treated as a minor infraction, punishable with a fine. Instead, the customs official canceled Ms. Petrova’s J-1 visa on the spot and initiated deportation proceedings. Christina Reiss, chief judge of the United States District Court in Vermont, repeatedly quizzed the government lawyers about their grounds for canceling Ms. Petrova’s visa and detaining her. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.