We Are Jailing Scientists Now

Scientist Kseniya Petrova has spent 3 months in a detention center in Louisiana. It’s about to get worse.

“There may not be as much humanity in the world as one would like to see. But there is some.” —James Baldwin

Kseniya Petrova is a researcher at Harvard who had the bad luck of holding a visa during a time when America has turned on immigrants with a fervor.

Kseniya Petrova by Polina Pugacheva

Petrova is from Russia and is an outspoken opponent of the Ukraine war. After the brazen invasion, Petrova was arrested in Russia for protesting the war. Although she was released and subsequently left the country, it was a bold stance to take against the bellicose Russian regime. For her public display of courage, Putin would love to get her back to Russia where he could return her to jail or have her fall out of a window.

In February, at the request of her Harvard supervisor Dr. Leon Peshkin, Petrova brought some preserved frog eggs back from France for analysis. They were from a French lab that specializes in very thin sections of frog eggs. They were inert and nonhazardous, and were carefully stored in a foam cooler with an ice pack.

The samples were completely legal, but she didn’t file the proper paperwork and was stopped by customs officers in Boston. Frog eggs are not dangerous, and no one could possibly be harmed by them. In fact, millions of lives could potentially be improved or saved by her research, which touches on diseases like Alzheimer’s and cancer. Still, it was a miscalculation on her part, and it was the kind of infraction that would typically merit a warning or perhaps a small fine.

The nightmare begins

Instead, against protocol and common sense, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials interrogated her and cancelled her visa. Then, without charging her, they hauled Petrova away to a detention center in Louisiana. Her laptop was confiscated, and she was not allowed to send messages, make calls, or get a lawyer. In the eyes of ICE, due process is optional, especially after they take your visa away. Judge Christina Reiss isn’t buying it. “Where does a Customs and Border Patrol officer have the authority on his or her own to revoke a visa?”

Petrova has spent the last three months in detention, without a hearing or even a hint of what the charges are against her. Finally, a bail hearing was scheduled for later this month, and Petrova and her Harvard colleagues were relieved that she might be released. According to The Hill, the hearing also established that her detention was unlawful.

But that was too much for the Trump administration, who feared looking feckless. So, yesterday — three months after her unlawful detention — the government filed criminal charges against her for smuggling. If she is convicted, she faces 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

Her status seems to be purposefully vague. ICE has talked about transferring her to Guantanamo as well as deporting her to Russia, which would be a huge gift to Putin. This seems deliberately designed to frighten foreign scientists away from American Universities, but that is horrible policy: chilling medical research will cost untold misery.

At Trump’s direction, DOGE has canceled grants, fired scientists, and derailed American research. It’s hard to realize that only 4 months ago, we were the envy of the world. Government research returns far more to our economy than it costs, and thus deserves more investment, not less. Our erstwhile openness to diverse points of view was a big part of why American science was so successful and a major reason why researchers came here. Some people think the scientists are lucky to be here, but that gets it exactly backward. We are lucky to get them.

Petrova’s work

Petrova’s work involves an amazing microscope at Harvard that can see things no other microscope can see. These images are not just beautiful, but extremely informative, revealing lipids and proteins on a cellular level.

Photo A is a confocal shot of nerve cells in a rat brain. Photo B is the same slide using NoRI. It shows the location of proteins (red-yellow) and lipids (blue-green) within individual cells, helping us to learn more about Alzheimer’s and aging. Images courtesy of Seungeun Oh, Kseniia Petrova, and William Trim.

From detention, Petrova says, “My background is in bioinformatics, a field that uses computational tools to understand biology. In my lab at Harvard, I worked with a microscope that we called NoRI (short for Normalized Raman Imaging). This microscope, which was created in our lab, is the only one like it in the world. What makes it unique is its ability to measure the chemical makeup of cells to an astonishing and novel degree of precision, offering new insights into disease and aging that could one day pave the way for healthier life spans and treatments for diseases like Alzheimer’s and cancer.”

Her Harvard supervisor Peshkin says Petrova is "spectacular, the best I've ever seen in 20 years at Harvard," and that she is essential to interpreting the results of the complex microscope. Without her, the research has been put on hold. What a victory for the Trump administration.

Trump has gone too far

I’ve talked to my friends who voted for Trump, and they are appalled. Yes, they were worried about criminal immigrants, but this is not what they had in mind. Many of them are older, and the research that Petrova is pursuing could improve their lives. They want to know why the government is punishing such an outstanding scientist.

Trump has threatened Harvard with a loss of grant money if they don’t immediately ban diversity in their curricula, so they are maddeningly quiet on this egregious violation of their own researcher’s rights. Fellow students with visas want to support her but are frightened that the same will happen to them if they do. The fear is palpable; that’s the intent. Ironically for Petrova, this is straight from the Russian playbook.

This is not an America I can recognize. Our country was founded on innovation and science. We were spunky enough to overthrow a King for god’s sake. If we care about our health or our loved ones’ health, we must stop the wholesale dismantling of research and the persecution of scientists. It’s shocking that it must be said, but we shouldn’t be trying to scare brilliant scientists away.

You can help. Contribute to the GoFundMe site her colleagues set up. Let your representatives know that this madness must stop. Petrova must be released, her visa must be reinstated, and her work must continue. Anything less is un-American.