Russian asylum-seekers mired in legal limbo

When David Viktor Ratkin crossed the border between California and Tijuana, Mexico, on May 12, 2024, he knew he could face some detention time. He wasn’t daunted, given his experience with time in Russian detention centers for political activism. But having meticulously followed the legal steps to apply for political asylum, he had every reason to hope his stay in U.S. custody would be short. In addition to proof of his involvement in the Russian opposition, he had a letter from Amnesty International attesting to fears for his safety if he returned to his home country.

But eight months later, Ratkin is still locked up in an ICE detention center in Tacoma, Wash., in legal limbo and without recourse to post bail. Hundreds of thousands of migrants who have crossed the U.S. borders using the process set out on the CBP One app have been released into the country on parole and told to appear for a later court date. But observers estimate ICE is currently holding between 6,000 and 10,000 Russian citizens in its network of 200 prisons across the country. A group of 256 detainees, including Ratkin, are now suing the Department of Homeland Security for discrimination in the asylum process. In the case filed in November, they say the government issued an unlawful blanket ban against citizens of Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Moldova as a group, denying them parole and impeding their asylum claims from moving forward.

Although the detainees and their lawyers blame discrimination for the detentions, they don’t really know why ICE continues to hold them. The agency has never provided a public explanation as to why it singled out emigrants from those particular countries. WORLD submitted four requests for comment for this story. ICE didn’t respond to any of them.

I visited Ratkin at the Northwest Detention Center in late December 2024 and early January 2025. A thick plate of glass separated us, and we had to speak through old phone receivers, like at a maximum security prison. I couldn’t tell him I was coming, because inmates cannot receive incoming calls, and sending messages over a recommended app is glitchy at best. The center is run by the GEO Group, a publicly traded, private prison company. Its internal classification system has Ratkin housed with “high custody” detainees who are considered high-risk and require maximum security housing. For my visit, I had to empty my pockets and could take nothing with me. This, along with strict instructions on the center’s website against physical contact and passing objects were laughable considering the inch-thick window that separated us.

I first met Ratkin over Zoom in 2021 when I interviewed him about repression in Russia. He’d been involved with anti-corruption leader Alexei Navalny’s group and organized protests after Navalny’s return to Russia and subsequent arrest that year. Russia’s secret police arrested Ratkin several times for his activism, and I spoke to him after he spent 10 days in a Russian detention center. Then came Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and government crackdown on opposition to the war.

After secret police ransacked his apartment, Ratkin knew it was time to go. He fled first to Turkey, then Kyrgyzstan, where he stayed for nearly two years. But he spoke impeccable English, thanks to four years in high school at Christian Life Academy in Baton Rouge, La.—and he had many family connections in the United States. America seemed like an obvious choice to relocate. Returning to Moscow to apply for a visa at the U.S. Embassy in Russia was out of the question, and as the war dragged on, Ratkin eventually followed the path already taken by many Russians escaping the war.

Using the CBP One app introduced for immigration by the Biden administration in January 2023, Ratkin waited in Tijuana from September 2023 until his appointment on May 12, 2024. He went to that appointment expecting to follow the usual protocol: confirm all his information, supply an address where he would be staying, get a court date, and then be set free until then. But he wasn’t. And neither were any of the other Russians who crossed at the same time.

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump halted use of the CBP One app and declared a 90-day suspension of decisions on applications for refugee status. That will certainly halt new asylum applications, but it’s unclear how it will affect applicants already in the system. It’s also unclear how the executive order will affect asylum seekers as opposed to refugees, since they go through a different legal process.

ICE scheduled Ratkin’s first hearing for mid-June 2024, with his final asylum hearing set for Sept. 22. But on Sept. 9, the agency moved him from the Imperial Detention Center in Calexico, Calif., to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. That move meant Ratkin changed jurisdictions for his hearings, and the timelines restarted from scratch. Ratkin says ICE did not inform his immigration lawyer prior to the move and agents told his lawyer he was still in California. In Washington state, Ratkin had a new master hearing in October. Now his asylum hearing is scheduled for March 4. That falls within the 90 days of suspension on asylum decisions outlined by Trump’s executive order. At that point, Ratkin will have spent 296 days in U.S. detention.

Abadir Barre and Curtis Morrison are co-counsels for Tereshchenko et al v. Mayorkas et al, the group lawsuit that includes Ratkin. The lawyers say ICE is ignoring its own protocol and is systematically discriminating against Russian asylum-seekers based solely on nationality. Evidence points to an internal Border Patrol memo instructing agents to release migrants into the U.S. with the exception of those from the six post-Soviet states. ICE has denied any such program of targeting based on nationality, but Barre says the nationals of those six countries languishing in detention centers are proof that something is amiss.

In 90% of cases involving asylum-seekers already in the country, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents give them documents and a hearing date and release them under a protocol called Alternatives to Detention. In the remaining 10% of cases, where CBP decides to detain or immediately deport asylum-seekers, applicants have a Credible Fear interview to explain the situation in their home country and their need for asylum. They can appeal to ICE for parole, and the government then has seven days to respond. If parole is denied and the government decides for expedited removal, that is supposed to happen in 14 days. Barre says both those hearings should normally happen within a couple of months to keep people from staying indefinitely in the ICE system.

Barre calls what’s currently happening the “Russian Detention Deterrence Scheme,” and says it’s an intentional effort to keep other Russians from applying for asylum. The prospect of detention for several months instead of weeks discourages other would-be asylum-seekers from starting the process. That’s a powerful deterrent for Russians facing increased military conscriptions as the war in Ukraine continues.

A June 9, 2024, article in the New York Post showed a photo of the leaked memo listing the six countries, and instructing that citizens from all other countries in the Eastern hemisphere be released into the U.S., despite President Joe Biden’s June 4 executive order banning asylum for most illegal immigrants. That means ICE continued to release the majority of migrants into the U.S., while citizens of the six post-Soviet countries went directly to or stayed in detention. A Fox News article, also from June 9 refers to the same leaked memo. The memo refers to the six countries as requiring “mandatory referral” and lists them under the “hard or very hard to remove” category. That refers to the fact that some governments currently don’t cooperate with U.S. repatriation efforts and won’t take their citizens back.

In early January, Barre filed a motion to make the detention memo public. “If there is no official program, then tell me why 256 Russian plaintiffs in several states have had their cases systematically delayed for over five months,” Barre said. The court denied the request on Jan. 22.

Barre agrees with Ratkin that the sudden order in June was almost certainly related to the presidential election. It was an easy way for the Biden administration to look like it was doing something tough about immigration at the southern border, even though detainees had followed the proper legal steps. Indeed, since all their information was already entered in the CBP One app, it was easy to identify which applicants were from the blacklisted countries.

But now, even though the election is over and a new administration in office, the detainees still wait. ICE regulations also normally allow detained asylum-seekers to post bail, but ICE has denied the Russians named in the lawsuit that possibility.

Scott Andrew Fulks, an immigration lawyer at Deckert Law in Minnesota, says that while 98% of asylum-seekers in the last years have been released on recognizance, ICE does have discretion to detain applicants. But after six months of detention, detainees generally file—and gain—parole under habeas corpus. ICE will also sometimes release detainees on bond following a hearing. Ratkin has requested a bond hearing several times to no avail.

Further muddying the waters is what is technically considered “legal” in this case. Since Ratkin crossed the U.S. border lacking appropriate visa documentation, Fulks says he’s considered to have entered not in accordance with current law—even though he used the Biden-approved CBP One system. “The past administration said, ‘The Attorney General shall provide a way for anyone who claims asylum at any port of entry or between ports of entry,’” Fulks says. “But now Trump says, ‘That is inviting people to break the law.’” So even while thousands of other migrants have entered the U.S. and been promptly released under this system during the past two years, ICE can apply the legal stance in this case to hold certain citizens it deems a security risk

To that, Barreand Morrison argue that the Parole Directive instructs ICE to “make an individualized determination as to the person’s flight and public safety or national security risk profile in exercising discretion to release or detain the noncitizen.” In other words, ICE is supposed to make those decisions on a case-by-case basis and not solely based on their nationality. That’s the crux of the lawsuit.

Anna Shumova also believes the detention order was election-related. She fled Moscow in 2022 after participating in anti-war protests. Shumova lives in Tacoma and helped start Russian Seattle for Freedom, a small nonprofit that helps new Russian immigrants learn English and find jobs. But since November, when one of the group members realized he knew someone detained at Tacoma’s ICE facility, the group has mobilized to support the 20 Russian citizens being held there. They organize visits and raise funds to put in inmates’ communication accounts so they can correspond with lawyers and stay in touch with family. They can send books, but ICE does not allow anything else into the center.

Just before Christmas, Shumova sent letters to inform local lawmakers and Washington state’s U.S. senators and congressional representatives of the situation. So far she has not gotten any response. I reached out to Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and got no response to a request for comment.

According to Ratkin’s father, Pastor Albert Ratkin, when David returned to Russia after four years in Louisiana, he was a fan of Russian President Vladimir Putin. That changed quickly and dramatically when he saw how Putin repressed his own people. The younger Ratkin began working for the political opposition, building the Protest Moscow grassroots Telegram channel and organizing protest marches. That sent him to detention in Moscow jails several times, the longest stretch for two weeks. I interviewed him just afterward. He’d been defiant then, insisting he didn’t mind serving jail time for a good cause. He told me he spent his detention time reading.

As his time in U.S. detention drags on, Ratkin has grown discouraged but remains stoic. And he’s still reading: “Political philosophy, a few Russian novels. I’m also learning Spanish.” He’s disappointed at the Jan. 22 ruling, but confident for his asylum case whenever he can finally present it. And he’s concerned ICE will again move him to another jurisdiction before his hearing date as a tactic to prolong his case. He says that he has very limited access to information about his own court cases, and he has to get updates via phone calls with his father.

His eyesight has deteriorated, and he has other health concerns. While his Russian detention time was for a cause, here in America it just feels like he’s a pawn in a vast game of strategy with no guarantees.

Back in Russia, his father Albert Ratkin now must identify himself as a “foreign agent” because his church received missionary funds from friends in partner churches in America. Those same American friends are ready to sponsor David and have arranged a personal lawyer for his asylum hearing. But as long as he languishes in Tacoma with court hearings continuously delayed, those connections are meaningless.

“David committed no crime,” Albert Ratkin told me. “He just wanted to live in a world where everyone can freely express his or her opinion and stand up for justice. He might be in America, but he’s not free.”