Judge: Harvard researcher charged with smuggling frog embryos was unlawfully detained by ICE
A federal judge in Vermont on Wednesday released a Russian-born scientist and Harvard University researcher from immigration custody as she deals with a criminal charge of smuggling frog embryos into the United States.
Colleagues and academics also testified on Kseniia Petrova's behalf, saying she is doing valuable research to advance cures for cancer.
'It is excellent science,' Michael West, a scientist and entrepreneur in the biotech industry, testified on Petrova's research papers. He said he does not know Petrova, but has become acquainted with her published work, citing one in which she explains that 'by mapping embryonic development, novel ways of intervening in the biology of regeneration and aging.'
West said that Petrova's medical research skills are highly sought after and that he himself would hire her 'in a heartbeat.'
Petrova, 30, is currently in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service in Louisiana. She is expected to be brought to Massachusetts as early as Friday in preparation for a bail hearing next week on the smuggling charge, lawyers said in court.
Petrova had been vacationing in France, where she stopped at a lab specializing in splicing superfine sections of frog embryos and obtained a package of samples to be used for research.
As she passed through a U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoint in Boston Logan International Airport in February, Petrova was questioned about the samples. She told The Associated Press in an interview last month that she did not realize the items needed to be declared and was not trying to sneak anything into the country. After an interrogation, Petrova was told her visa was being canceled.
After being detained by immigration officials, she filed a petition in Vermont seeking her release. She was briefly detained in Vermont before she was brought to Louisiana.
Petrova was charged with smuggling earlier this month as U.S. District Judge Christina Reiss in Burlington set the hearing date on her petition. Reiss ruled Wednesday that the immigration officers' actions were unlawful, that Petrova didn't present a danger, and that the embryos were non-living, non-hazardous and 'posed a threat to no one.'
Petrova's lawyer, Gregory Romanovsky, had asked Reiss to issue an order to stop the possibility of ICE re-detaining her if she is also released from detention in Massachusetts.
Reiss said she was reluctant 'to enjoin an executive agency from untaking future actions which are uncertain' and would rely on U.S. Department of Justice attorney Jeffrey Hartman's comments that the government has no intention at this time to re-arrest Petrova.
Romanovsky had said Customs and Border Protection officials had no legal basis for canceling Petrova's visa and detaining her.
The Department of Homeland Security had said in a statement on the social media platform X that Petrova was detained after 'lying to federal officers about carrying substances into the country.' They allege that messages on her phone 'revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them.'
Harvard had said in a statement that the university 'continues to monitor the situation.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox News
26 minutes ago
- Fox News
WATCH LIVE: New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli holds rally
All times eastern FOX News Radio Live Channel Coverage WATCH LIVE: New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli holds rally
Wall Street Journal
34 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
What's Good for Politicians Is Good for General Motors
General Motors CEO Mary Barra earned $29.5 million last year, and it's hard to argue that she isn't earning her keep. The automaker sold more cars in the U.S. than any other company last year, and its profits have doubled in her 11 years as CEO. Credit her ability to please her most important customers—politicians. Their command is her wish. While doubling down on manufacturing profitable gas guzzlers, Ms. Barra promoted electric vehicles to ingratiate herself to Democrats who want to eliminate the products that churn out profits for her company. She again proved her flexible principles last week by praising President Trump's auto tariffs, which the company estimates will dent its profits by $5 billion this year. 'I think tariffs is one tool that the administration can use to level the playing field,' she said. What she omitted is that the playing field has been tilted in GM's favor for decades by a 25% tariff on pickup trucks, which gives domestic automakers an effective monopoly. Also: Mr. Trump's new 25% tariffs on all cars and parts not made in the U.S. will hurt GM, but they will wallop its foreign competitors even more. In 2018 Ms. Barra got a crash course in politicking when she announced a corporate restructuring that involved closing four U.S. plants that produced low-selling sedans. Her goal was to make GM leaner and more profitable. In this she succeeded, but she blundered by not throwing a bone to Mr. Trump, who thinks CEOs answer to him.
New York Times
36 minutes ago
- New York Times
Stanley Fischer, Who Helped Defuse Financial Crises, Dies at 81
Stanley Fischer, an economist and central banker whose scholarship and genial, consensus-seeking style helped guide global economic policies and defuse financial crises for decades, died on Saturday at his home in Lexington, Mass. He was 81. The cause was complications of Alzheimer's disease, his son Michael said. Mr. Fischer served as the head of Israel's central bank from 2005 to 2013, as vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 2014 to 2017 and as the No. 2 officer at the International Monetary Fund from 1994 to 2001, when that agency was struggling to contain financial panics in Mexico, Russia, Asia and Latin America. As a professor at M.I.T., he was a thesis adviser or mentor to an extraordinary range of future leaders, including Ben S. Bernanke, later chairman of the Fed; Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank; and Kazuo Ueda, governor of the Bank of Japan. His former students also included two people who chaired the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers, Christina D. Romer and N. Gregory Mankiw, as well as Lawrence H. Summers, who served as secretary of the Treasury and president of Harvard University. 'He had a role in shaping a whole generation of economists and policymakers,' Mr. Bernanke said in a February 2024 interview for this obituary. That included spurring Mr. Bernanke's initial interest in macroeconomics and monetary policy. In 1998, The Times described Mr. Fischer as 'the closest thing the world economy has to a battlefield medic.' He helped negotiate a rescue package for Russia by cellphone while standing atop a sand dune on Martha's Vineyard, where he was on vacation. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
