Harvard University researcher Kseniia Petrova is facing a pair of additional charges two weeks after a judge released her from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention. <\/p>\n
In a court filing Wednesday, the federal government charged Petrova with one count of concealment of a material fact and one count of false statement, on top of the one count of smuggling goods she already faced after she was detained by ICE in February for allegedly smuggling frog embryos into the country.<\/p>\n
The Russian-born scientist saw her J-1 nonimmigrant visa revoked\u00a0and faced deportation back to Russia, which she said she fears due to her opposition to the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Christina Reiss recently ruled Petrova is not a flight risk and allowed her to be released while her proceedings move forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are gratified that today\u2019s hearing gave us the 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,\u201d said Gregory Romanovsky, Petrova\u2019s attorney.<\/p>\n
Petrova has said she did not realize the items in her bag needed to be declared. The federal government claims she purposely concealed the alleged frog embryos.<\/p>\n
\u201cA subsequent K9 inspection uncovered undeclared petri dishes, containers of unknown substances, and loose vials of embryonic frog cells, all without proper permits,\u201d a Homeland Security spokesperson said in the statement. \u201cMessages found on her phone revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Harvard University researcher Kseniia Petrova is facing a pair of additional charges two weeks after a judge released her from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention. In a court filing Wednesday, the federal government charged Petrova with one count of concealment of a material fact and one count of false statement, on top of the one count of smuggling goods she already faced after she was detained by ICE in February for allegedly smuggling frog embryos into the country. The Russian-born scientist saw her J-1 nonimmigrant visa revoked\u00a0and faced deportation back to Russia, which she said she fears due to her opposition to the war in Ukraine. U.S. District Judge Christina Reiss recently ruled Petrova is not a flight risk and allowed her to be released while her proceedings move forward. \u201cWe are gratified that today\u2019s hearing gave us the 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,\u201d said Gregory Romanovsky, Petrova\u2019s attorney. Petrova has said she did not realize the items in her bag needed to be declared. The federal government claims she purposely concealed the alleged frog embryos. \u201cA subsequent K9 inspection uncovered undeclared petri dishes, containers of unknown substances, and loose vials of embryonic frog cells, all without proper permits,\u201d a Homeland Security spokesperson said in the statement. \u201cMessages found on her phone revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-design-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/francereal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/francereal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/francereal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francereal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francereal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/francereal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654,"href":"https:\/\/francereal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions\/654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francereal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/francereal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francereal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francereal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}