This Harvard scientist hangs on to hope after months in ICE detention

The Herald Scotland

12-05-2025

Trim plays Bach or Chopin to calm her until the jail line clicks off at the 15-minute mark and she - a shy, 30-year-old Harvard scientist with no history of immigration violations or criminality - retreats to the bunk where she has slept for nearly three months in immigration detention.
"I know he is very worried about me," Petrova told USA TODAY, using one of the phones.
"Maybe I should be tougher," said Trim, a biologist, who works in a Harvard Medical School lab with Petrova, his colleague and roommate. "But even after three months, the music doesn't sing anymore unless she calls and wants to hear it."
Across the country, President Donald Trump's deportation campaign is ensnaring people of all sorts - not only immigrants with criminal backgrounds, as promised during the presidential campaign.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has detained international students, immigrants with valid green cards, immigrants with legal work permits; tourists, U.S. citizen children, and, in Petrova's case, top-tier scholars who work legally in the nation's prestigious research labs. A court hearing May 14 could decide her fate.
Trim and Petrova met in the Harvard Medical School lab in Boston where they worked together on cutting-edge research on aging and longevity. In photos, he is blond and slender; she has shoulder-length black hair and a round face.
He was a British post-doctoral student looking for a place to continue his research. Petrova, a computational scientist, arrived after fleeing Russia. She had been working for the Genome Russia project, mapping the genetic variation of humankind, until she ran afoul of Vladimir Putin's government for protesting Russia's war on Ukraine.
"She didn't compromise," Trim said, with awe. "She stood up for what she believed in."
In mid-February, Petrova was returning to Boston from France when U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped her at baggage claim. She had gone to Paris to visit friends and see the concert of a Hungarian pianist she adored. Before she departed, she stopped by a sister laboratory to pick up a package of non-hazardous biological samples to bring back to Harvard, at the request of her boss. The last time they tried to ship the samples they went bad before arriving.
Customs officers alleged Petrova didn't properly declare the samples, which included "loose vials of frog cells... without proper permits," the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
"She knowingly broke the law and took deliberate steps to evade it," according to the statement, which criticized media coverage of "noteworthy individuals," including Petrova.
The customs officers could have withheld the samples and issued a fine, her attorney said; instead, they canceled her J-1 scholar visa and detained her. She was turned over to ICE, sent to a processing center in Vermont and then transferred to the Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, Louisiana.
And Petrova and Trim, like many others, began to learn the sometimes cruel idiosyncrasies of the U.S. immigration system.
How foreigners can be held without charge. How immigration detention isn't supposed to be punishing, even though detention centers look, feel and often were, in the past, prisons. How expensive it is call in. How distant ICE detention centers often are from major cities.
Trim has made the trek from Boston to Monroe - population 46,616 - three times, with a fourth visit planned.
Each time, guards shepherd him to a prison wing beyond a double-barbed wire fence, to a room where Petrova waits. They are allowed a quick embrace at the beginning of their two-hour allotment. They sit at the short ends of a long table. They are allowed another quick hug at the end.
The first time he asked, "Are you okay?"
"The guard sat at a table right behind her," Trim said. "I don't know if he was taking notes. She was in a jumpsuit, a green prison outfit which was kind of sad, especially for someone who has done nothing wrong. She was reserved about what to say."
"I miss everything," Petrova told USA TODAY. "To work, to read articles, to discuss with my colleagues, to make experiments, to do science."
Trim sends her books direct from Amazon, per detention center rules. Petrova is reading his latest gift: Transformer, by Nick Lane, a book on biochemistry whose central question is: "What brings the Earth to life, and our own lives to an end?"
Petrova looks less well each time he sees her, Trim said, by scientific observation. "My masters degree is in nutritional biochemistry," he said. "I noticed very specific things in her eyes, hair and skin and fingernails.He sends her money for commissary. "She buys multivitamins but it's not doing enough."
They both miss the freedoms they took for granted.
Chatting about the day's research on the six-minute walk from their apartment near Fenway Park to the Harvard lab. Boldly trying new recipes for dinner though neither knows how to cook. Sitting on the floor listening to classical music every night.
"I'm not sure why we sat on the floor," Trim said, laughing. Petrova would invariably ask if he'd like some "Russian" tea, maybe while he played the piano? He'd jokingly remind her the tea package was labeled "London."
He'd sit down to the piano.
"I like listening to his playing very much," Petrova said. "I would even prefer to listening to some professional. The music isn't about technique; it's about feelings."
"She was always shy about asking me to play," he said. "I'm not very good but she genuinely liked hearing it. It's all those little things. We would cook, have tea, play music and talk. And then in the morning we'd start again."
On weekends, she made cappuccinos.
"She has a way to use a French press to froth milk," Trim said.
"It's stupid, but I watched a video on YouTube," she said, giggling. "Don't tell him."
Most nights now, Trim can't stand to be in the apartment alone, so he walks the streets of Boston until late. Until the clock nears midnight by him, 11 p.m. and lights out by her.
He plays the piano. She listens.
A woman's automated voice interrupts the phone call: "You have one minute remaining on this call."
He plays a few measures more. The line clicks off.
Lauren Villagran can be reached at [e-mail].