ICE Just Jailed One of America's Top Young Age-Reversing Scientists

Despite being backed by death-fearing billionaires, Donald Trump's administration has detained and seeks to deport a brilliant anti-aging researcher. As the New York Times reports, 30-year-old Kseniia Petrova, a Russian-born lab researcher at the Harvard Medical School, was detained at Boston's Logan Airport upon returning from a trip to France. Soon after Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine in his second attempt to annex its former Eastern Bloc neighbor, Petrova fled the country out of fear that her opposition to the war would lead to repression or worse. Her trip to France offered a chance to reconnect with old friends from […]

Apr 12, 2025 - 12:57

ICE Just Jailed One of America's Top Young Age-Reversing Scientists

Despite being backed by death-fearing billionaires, the Trump administration seeks to deport a brilliant anti-aging researcher.

Despite being backed by death-fearing billionaires, Donald Trump's administration has detained — and seeks to deport — an acclaimed anti-aging researcher.

As the New York Times reports, 30-year-old Kseniia Petrova, a Russian-born lab researcher at the Harvard Medical School, was detained at Boston's Logan Airport upon returning from a trip to France.

Soon after Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in his second attempt to annex its former Eastern Bloc neighbor, Petrova fled Russia out of fear that her opposition to the war would lead to repression or worse. Her trip to France offered a chance to reconnect with old friends from Moscow who had, like her, left for political reasons — and to pick up some rare, super-finely-sliced frog embryos from a Parisian lab that her supervisor, research scientist Leon Peshkin, was affiliated with.

According to the Customs officials who pulled Petrova aside on February 18, the researcher's only crime was failing to declare those sliced frog embryos, which are used in Peshkin and Petrova's research for their remarkable regeneration abilities.

Generally, such a minor infraction would warrant no more than a $500 fine, if that. Instead, the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officials who detained Petrova canceled her J-1 student visa right there at Logan Airport and immediately started deportation proceedings.

The cellular regeneration scholar, who fled her home country after publicly supporting Ukraine at the start of the invasion in 2022, told CBP that she feared she could be arrested if returned to Russia. Ever conciliatory, CBP sent Petrova to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Louisiana rather than flying her back to her repressive homeland — and nearly two months later, she's still there.

Unlike other high-profile cases involving students on visas and green cards being detained and deported by the Trump administration over their political beliefs — which is itself unconstitutional — there's no public indication that Petrova is involved with any activist movements stateside. Furthermore, she fled Russia due to being pro-Ukraine, which is nominally still in line with the United States' stance in the now three-year-long war between the countries.

According to a Homeland Security spokesperson who spoke to the NYT about the case, Petrova was detained not just for failing to declare the frog embryo samples, but also for "lying to federal officers about carrying biological substances into the country."

"Messages on her phone revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them," the spokesperson continued. "She knowingly broke the law and took deliberate steps to evade it."

With her visa revoked, Petrova is now considered an undocumented immigrant in the eyes of the law. She'll soon stand trial as she seeks political asylum in the US — and if it's not granted, she'll ultimately be deported back to Russia.

In its zeal to police our borders, this administration has jailed someone whose politics align with purported American foreign policy — and who is working to achieve the kind of age-defying treatments that pro-Trump billionaires like Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, and Jeff Bezos would shell out untold sums to access. The irony is palpable.

More on science under Trump: The Majority of Scientists Are Now Considering Fleeing America

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