A Harvard Medical School researcher currently detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement says she should have reviewed customs protocols before attempting to enter the US with “non-hazardous” frog embryo samples but insists what she told immigration agents was misunderstood.
“I never provided false info rmation to any government official,” Kseniia Petrova, a Russian national, said in a statement issued Thursday. “Some of my words were misunderstood and inaccurately reflected in the statement that the officer presented for my signature.”
Petrova is accused of “lying to federal officers” about what she was carrying, according to a Department of Homeland Security statement. The agency also alleges she “broke the law and took deliberate steps to evade it.”
Messages on Petrova’s phone “revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them,” the statement said.
Petrova said she was never asked if she had any “biological material,” and that she asked for that part of her inspection statement to be corrected, as well as “other inaccuracies.” She said those changes were never made and, because of that, she was detained.
“I should have reviewed U.S. customs paperwork requirements,” she said, adding that she was more concerned with getting the s amples to her lab before they degraded.
Petrova, who describes herself as “a nerdy 30-year-old scientist who typically works 10 to 12 hours a day,” said her boss asked her to bring the scientific samples back from Paris for their cancer research. Petrova said she didn’t expect any problems getting the embryos through customs because they were “non-toxic, non-hazardous, and non-infectious.”
Petrova has spent more than 10 weeks in an ICE detention facility in Louisiana. Since she has been in custody, people have sent her science books, supportive notes and letters, and some of her colleagues have come to visit, she said.
“I take full responsibility for not properly declaring the frog embryo samples. What I do not understand is why the American officials say I am being held because I am a danger to the community and a flight risk,” Petrova said. “I only want to be in the lab working on research. That is my life’s purpose. That is what I’m all about.”
Later this month she has a federal court hearing in Vermont challenging her detention. If the court decides the government acted unlawfully, the judge could release her, according to her attorney Greg Romanovsky. If not, she faces deportation to Russia, where, according to her attorney, she would face immediate arrest over her previous outspoken opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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