Harvard antiaging researcher Kseniia Petrova was ordered out of immigration custody early Wednesday after a two-hour bail hearing before federal judge Christina Reiss in Vermont. Petrova is in the criminal custody of U.S. marshals, so is not now actually at liberty, but expects to have a second bail hearing in Massachusetts next week on a charge of criminal smuggling of frog embryos. If set free on bail from criminal custody, she would be released.
Petrova, a Russian citizen working at Harvard on an exchange visa, was stopped at Logan Airport on Feb. 16 and detained for a customs violation of carrying undeclared clawed Xenopus frog embryos – nontoxic and nonhazardous and on microscope slides and in vials.
Her visa was canceled and she was held in immigration custody from then until May 14, when a criminal complaint for smuggling was unsealed and she was transferred from immigration custody to the U.S. marshals. Her lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition in February while Petrova was being held in Vermont, and she was subsequently transferred to immigration custody in Louisiana – but her legal case remains in Vermont.
The timing of the May 14 arrest was particularly notable because Reiss had just held a hearing on Petrova’s habeas corpus petition – seeking her ultimate release – and had scheduled the May 28 bail hearing to focus on temporary release. Within hours or minutes of the end of the May 14 hearing, the government arrested Petrova on the criminal charge of smuggling the same frog embryos. Petrova’s lawyers say that the criminal charge is retaliatory and intended to disrupt her habeas case:
“People just don’t get prosecuted for smuggling in a case like this,” attorney Gregory Romanovsky told the court.
Witnesses
At Wednesday’s hearing, Petrova’s lawyers presented four witnesses; and the government none.
First, Michael D. West, an eminent cell biologist who had read Petrova’s work and had reached out to the French Institut Curie and confirmed that the frog embryo samples Petrova carried were “entirely nonhazardous, noninfectious, nontoxic, nonhuman histological samples” treated with formaldehyde. West compared them to shoe leather.
West said he did not know Petrova, but that he would hire her to work for his company “in a heartbeat” based on her skills and published work.
Next, Cora Anderson, a research assistant at Harvard Medical School who worked with Petrova. She described Petrova as “an endless well of kindness” and told of a story of having her hunt for an apartment and how Petrova was exceptionally polite, even to a “creepy” landlord who wanted to retain access to the living space he would rent to Petrova. (They left and did not rent the property.)
“All she wants to do is go back to work,” Anderson said.
Third, Maria Diakova, who studied with Petrova at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and now works at Harvard. Diakova testified to Petrova’s willingness to take time out of her own work to assist Diakova.
Fourth, Marc Kirschner, the head of the Harvard Medical School lab where Petrova worked. Kirschner said his lab developed a new type of microscope but, until Petrova arrived, had great difficulty with quantitative analysis of it. Petrova made a large contribution to computational analysis of the data, he said.
Asked about her character and if she was disrespectful, Kirchner suggested most people are not disrespectful – but if he had to pick a person in his lab who was the least disrespectful, he would choose Petrova.
The government had only a handful of questions for the witnesses. It elicited that West had not personally examined the samples; and that Diakova did not work with Petrova at Harvard before she was detained.
Argument
Romanovsky, Petrova’s lawyer, argued that because the cancellation of her visa on Feb. 16 at Logan Airport was illegal under the Administrative Procedure Act, all actions that flowed from that should be set aside. Romanovsky had previously said that cancellation of a visa is not allowed because of a customs violation – the proper remedy, if there is a violation, is a fine.
Jeffrey Hartman, for the government, argued that all of this belonged in immigration court, and suggested that even though the legal arguments were about constitutional issues or federal regulatory issues, they could be handled by an immigration judge. The judge was skeptical and did not adopt Hartman’s framing of the case.
Shortly after 11:30 a.m., Reiss announced that time was of the essence and that she would rule from the bench, rather than in writing later.
Reiss found that Petrova had met the legal standard for release: both that she had raised a substantial legal claim against her detention, and that “exceptional circumstances” justified her release. Those exceptional circumstances, Reiss said, included her fear of being deported to Russia (Petrova has expressed support for Ukraine), as well as her scientific work at Harvard. Reiss found that Petrova was neither a danger nor a risk of flight, although she agreed the government could propose conditions of release by Friday.
Romanovsky told Reiss that Petrova expects to have a bail hearing in Massachusetts next week in her criminal case.
Hartman told Reiss that, just as in the case of Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk and Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi, he does not anticipate the government redetaining Petrova if she is ordered released.
After the hearing, Romanovsky said they were “gratified” it gave an opportunity to present “clear and convincing evidence that Kseniia Petrova was not carrying anything dangerous or unlawful, and that customs officers at Logan International Airport had no legal authority to revoke her visa or detain her. At today’s hearing, we demonstrated that Kseniia is neither a danger to the community nor a flight risk, and does not belong in immigration detention.”
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