Yes, We're Now Deporting Scientists To Russia For Not Declaring Frog Embryos To Customs
Look, Trump has a quota to meet.
The Trump administration’s war on immigrants and its war on science have converged in the case of Kseniia Petrova, a Harvard scientist who was doing groundbreaking work on medical imaging that “could lead to breakthroughs in cancer detection and research into longevity.” But for the last two months she’s been locked up in an ICE detention facility in Louisiana, because she when she flew back to the US from France in February, she failed to do the proper customs paperwork to declare some frozen frog embryos her supervisor had asked her to bring back with her.
Her attorney, Gregory Romanovsky, says that normally, the penalty for failing to declare something like that would be forfeiting the stuff and a maximum $500 fine, but for a first-time violation, someone would probably see the fine reduced to $50, though they’d still lose the items and get and a stern warning not to do it again.
But normal times ended on January 1, so when Petrova arrived at Boston’s Logan International Airport, Customs instead revoked her J-1 academic visa and arrested her, telling her she’d be deported to her home country, Russia. After all, they claimed she was a dangerous alien trying to smuggle unidentified biological material into the country!!!
Petrova fled Russia shortly after being arrested and released for protesting the invasion of Ukraine, fearing she would go to prison, so when she was detained in Boston she told officials she feared arrest and oppression if deported. That started an asylum case, and fortunately, she didn’t have a tattoo of a DNA strand or nucleotide or anything, so she wasn’t shipped off to the torture prison in El Salvador. But ICE has also refused, twice, to allow her out on parole while her case is pending, claiming that she’s a flight risk and national security threat. Yes really.
The first hearing in her asylum case is scheduled for today, after which more information on what’ll happen next should be available. If Petrova isn’t granted asylum, she faces deportation. Petrova is just one of hundreds of international researchers who are now in fear of being deported under the Trump Regime, which is also slashing research budgets, sometimes because we can’t afford science when billionaires need a tax cut, and sometimes to punish Americans’ health because universities won’t bow down to the authority of Mad King Donald.
Leon Peshkin, Petrova’s supervisor at Harvard’s Kirschner Lab, recruited her to join a team that’s studying how embryonic cells repair themselves, research that has implications for cancer diagnosis and possibly for slowing the effects of aging, as well as just being hella cool biological knowledge in its own right. Petrova, a graduate of the elite Russian Physics and Technology Institute, had expertise in biology and computers that made her an invaluable contributor to the team. Peshkin told NBC News that the lab’s work
“requires a unique set of skills because you have to both be able to work as an embryologist and do applied math, modeling, data analysis and bioinformatics — all in one package.”
When asked how many people in his lab could do all of that, he said simply: “That was only her. It was only her.”
Another of her exiled Russian advocates, molecular biologist Konstantin Severinov, who’s now at Rutgers, describes her as a “supernerd”; before the Ukraine invasion, he had actually recruited Petrovka for his lab in Russia, but she wouldn’t sign a loyalty oath necessary for a security clearance, so he could only bring her on as a consultant. He told The New York Times (gift link) that her combination of computer and biology expertise could have made her big bucks, but she was far more interested in doing science and staying true to her principles than in careerism.
In the US, after signing on at Harvard, Petrova developed computer coding that made it possible to quickly analyze images captured by a unique, laser-based microscope used by colleague William Trim to study “the migration of lipids through tissue,” relieving him of having to log the observations by hand.
Trim told NBC News, “I’m very confident she is the only way we can achieve the true potential of this microscope and the insights we could make. […] Without her, I fully believe that all the insights into cures or fundamental biology that we could make will not be made.”
Petrova took a vacation in France early this year, a chance to unwind and meet up with other exiled Russian scientists. While she was there, the Times explains, Peshkin asked her to help him out with a problem, the way scientists sometimes do if they aren’t spending every waking moment paying attention to American politics. It is no longer safe to not spend every waking moment thinking about America’s drift into fascism, however.
Dr. Peshkin collaborates with a laboratory in Paris, where one of the scientists had figured out how to slice superfine sections of a frog embryo.
No one at Harvard knew how to do it; high-quality samples would substantially speed up their work. A few times, their French colleagues had tried to mail the embryo samples, but they thawed in transit and arrived too damaged to use.
“I said, ‘Well, you’re there,’” Dr. Peshkin said. “Why don’t you get this package?”
But he didn’t instruct her on how she should properly declare the samples on arrival in the US, and she got off the plane while they were still discussing it via text message. Read the New York Times gift link for the whole harrowing story; the upshot is that she was mostly worrying about the samples arriving safely, not about having the paperwork in order, so she was arrested. (Whether the Customs and Border Protection agents at Logan had the authority to revoke her visa over a declarations violation is another matter that may end up as part of her case, too.)
And now, DHS is bragging that it has foiled a SCARY SMUGGLING PLOT:
A spokesperson for the D.H.S., asked why Ms. Petrova’s visa had been canceled, said that a canine inspection found petri dishes and vials of embryonic stem cells in her luggage without proper permits.
“The individual was lawfully detained after lying to federal officers about carrying biological substances into the country,” the spokesperson said. “Messages on her phone revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them. She knowingly broke the law and took deliberate steps to evade it.”
We suppose that if this story gets more attention in the press, the next escalation will be for the government to insist that Petrova, a criminal in her home country for protesting the Ukraine invasion, was actually trying to smuggle bioweapons or something.
Petrova told the Times, “this is not the kind of America I used to know.”
Dr. Peshkin also feels horrible about having asked her for the favor, and found that when he asked colleagues to write letters of support for Petrova, many declined, fearing it could put their own academic visas at risk. At a time when students can lose their visas and be deported for writing an editorial and even green card holders can be expelled for opinions they might have in the future, sadly, that’s not an unreasonable fear. Who knows — perhaps Harvard’s new willingness to push back against the growing dictatorship will encourage academics who are US-born citizens to make noise on her behalf.
For her part, Petrova is trying to study more about cell development while in a cell herself, and told the Times she doesn’t blame Peshkin at all. She just wants to get back to sciencing if she can, preferably at Harvard.
If she had access to a laptop, and could analyze data from her laboratory at Harvard, “it would be good enough,” she said.
But she worries that, when this is all over, she will no longer be able to work at the same level. “Even if I am released, I will feel myself much less safe,” she said. “Of course it will affect my efficiency. I will be very afraid. What if I get rearrested?”
If, Crom forbid, her asylum case is denied, we at least hope she can be released to a third country where she can freely do science, like France or Canada. Time to add “Kseniia Petrova” to your protest signs, kids.
And yes, even in The New York Times comments, there are people who don’t see the darkness coming who insist that 1) Petrova is getting what she deserves for smuggling; 2) how would you feel if somebody had smuggled undeclared petri dishes full of EBOLA, HUH? 3) Peshkin, not the Trump administration, is the real bad guy here, including one weird suggestion that maybe he was trying to import a frog pandemic vector); 4) this is just a sob story being promoted by advocates of open borders because 10 times as many immigrants are carrying knives and guns, not frog embryos; and 5) this is all Biden’s fault because none of this would be happening if he hadn’t opened the southern border and allowed millions and millions of dangerous aliens to stream through, so now we have to do fascism instead.
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Still unclear: Are they turnin' the frog embryos gay?
"she wouldn’t sign a loyalty oath necessary for a security clearance, so he could only bring her on as a consultant."
There was a time, not very long ago and still lodged like grit in the nacre of Trump's terrible mind, when the US was proud of itself for taking Russians like this to work there, where they could be free and could work against the country they had been oppr... oh.
Oh, ok.