Harvard scientist Kseniia Petrova has been in ice detention for three months. She is one of the number of non-criminal immigrants who have been detained on the ice since Donald Trump took office.
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Every night, in the middle of the night, Will sits on the piano in his Boston apartment, waiting for the lights to be held at the Louisiana Ice Detention Center where his best friend is in custody.
His cell phone rings. Meanwhile, Kseniia Petrova is silent. She leans against the brick wall of a frozen ward with 101 other women and holds one of the six working phones in her ear. She listens.
Trim plays Bach or Chopin, calming her down until the prison line is clicked on at the 15-minute mark, and she retreates to the bed where a shy Harvard scientist with no history of immigration violations or crime – has been sleeping in immigration detention for nearly three months.
“I know he’s very concerned about me,” Petrova told USA Today using one of his phones.
“Maybe I’m going to be tougher,” said Trim, a biologist who works in the Harvard Medical School lab with his colleague and roommate Petrova. “But even after three months, I won’t sing the music anymore unless she wants to call and listen.”
All over the country, President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign involves not only immigrants with criminal history, but people of all kinds, as promised during the presidential election.
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains international students, immigrants with valid green cards, and immigrants with legal work permits. Tourists, children of US citizens, and in Petrova’s case, first-class scholars who work legally in prestigious laboratories in the country. The court on May 14th was able to determine her fate.
Trim and Petrova met at the Harvard Medical University Lab in Boston, where they cooperated in cutting-edge research on aging and longevity. In the photo, he is blonde and thin. She has shoulder length black hair and a round face.
He was a British postdoctoral student looking for a place to continue his research. Computational scientist Petrova arrives after fleeing Russia. She worked for the Genome Russia Project, mapping genetic variations in humanity until she violated the Vladimir Putin government to protest Russia’s war with Ukraine.
“She didn’t compromise,” Trim said with awe. “She stood up for what she believed.”
In mid-February, Petrova had returned to Boston from France when US Customs and Border Protection stopped her on a package request. She visited a friend and went to Paris to see a concert of a Hungarian pianist she worshipped. Before she left, she stopped by the Sister Institute to pick up a package of non-concentrated biological samples to return to Harvard at the request of her boss. When they last tried to ship the samples, they got worse before they arrived.
Customs officials alleged that Petrova did not properly declare the sample. The samples contain “a loose vial of frog cells without proper permission,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
“She intentionally broke the law and took deliberate steps to avoid it,” according to a statement criticizing media reports from “remarkable individuals,” including Petrova.
Customs officials may have issued fines withheld samples, her lawyer said. Instead, they cancelled her J-1 Scholar Visa and took her into custody. She was handed over to ice and sent to a processing center in Vermont, then moved to Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, Louisiana.
And Petrova and Trim, like many others, began to learn the sometimes cruel idiosyncraticity of the US immigration system.
How to detain foreigners for free. Even if detention centres see and feel, and often have been in prison in the past, immigrant detention should not be punished. How expensive is call-in? Distant ice detention centres are often frequent from major cities.
Trim did a trek from Boston to Monroe – a population of 46,616 – three and fourth visits are planned.
Each time, he will take him over the shepherd’s wings over the double-bar wire fence and protect the shepherd in the room where Petroba awaits. They are allowed a quick hug at the start of the two-hour allocation. They sit on the short edge of a long table. They are allowed another quick hug at the end.
The first time he asked, “Are you okay?”
“The guard was sitting at the table just behind her,” Trim said. “I don’t know if he’s taking notes or not. She was wearing a jumpsuit, and she was a bit sad green prison outfit, especially for those who haven’t done anything wrong.
“I miss everything,” Petrova told USA Today. “To work, to read articles, to discuss with colleagues, to experiment, to do science.”
TRIM sends books directly from Amazon in accordance with the rules of the detention center. Petrova reads a book on biochemistry in which his latest gift: Transformers, Nick Lane, whose central question is “What will bring the planet to life and end our own lives?”
Petrova doesn’t look very good every time he sees her by scientific observation. “My master’s degree is nutritional biochemistry,” he said. “I noticed something very specific to her eyes, hair, skin and nails. He sends money for the committee.” She buys a multivitamin, but that’s not enough. ”
They both miss the obvious freedom.
We chat about a day’s study of a six-minute walk from an apartment near Fenway Park to a Harbor Lab. I’m boldly trying new recipes for dinner, but neither knows how to cook. I sit on the floor listening to classical music every night.
“I don’t know why we were sitting on the floor,” Trim said with a laugh. Will Petrova constantly ask whether he wants “Russian” tea while he plays the piano? He jokingly reminded me that the tea package was labelled “London.”
He was sitting on the piano.
“I love hearing him play so much,” Petrova said. “I prefer to listen to professionals. Music is not about techniques. It’s about emotions.”
“She was always embarrassed to ask me to play,” he said. “I’m not very good, but she really liked listening to it. It’s all little. We cook, tea, play music, talk, and then we started again in the morning.”
Over the weekend, she made a cappuccino.
“She has a way of using milk using the French media,” Trim said.
“Silly, I saw the video on YouTube,” she said with a laugh. “Don’t tell him.”
Most nights now, Trim can’t stand only the apartment, so he walks late down the streets of Boston. It lights up beside her at 11pm until the clock approaches midnight.
He plays the piano. She listens.
A woman’s automated voice interrupts the phone: “I’ve been left for one minute on this phone.”
He plays some more measures. The line will click.
Lauren Villagran can be accessed at lvillagran@usatoday.com.