Russian and other post-Soviet activists are alarmed that their compatriots seeking political asylum in the US are being detained in large numbers and sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers. While citizens of other countries are often released within a few weeks, people from Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Moldova are being held for months.

Political activist Yevgeny Mashinin spent 13 months in a detention center before being deported back to Russia, according to the independent Russian online media outlet Dovod. In Russia, Mashinin had been detained at political protests and fined for antiwar posts on social media.

“My trial was in detention, with Judge Kevin Terrill, who practically never approves cases, winning was impossible, not even a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights helped. There was even a person with a criminal case against him [in Russia] who was denied asylum, and the judge told him: ‘you will be imprisoned, but they will not kill you,’” Mashinin told Dovod.

After Mashinin returned to Russia, the police came to his house, forcing him to flee again, this time to Morocco, Dovod reported.

Russian opposition leader Ilya Yashin, among the political prisoners released by Russia in August 2024 as part of a prisoner swap, wrote on his Telegram channel in January that he had discussed the issue with members of Congress in Washington. Yashin said it was the first time they had heard about the problem.

“People are being kept behind bars, their personal belongings are taken away, they wear prison uniforms and are taken around in handcuffs,” Yashin wrote. “It’s completely wild. We are not talking about criminals, we are talking about people fleeing war, repression and Putin’s prisons. And yet they end up in American prisons.”

Immigration lawyer Julia Nikolaev, who has been working on this issue, went to Congress with Yashin and representatives from the Free Russia Foundation and spoke about the situation in an interview with an exiled Russian news channel TV Rain. She said mass detentions of Russians started in June 2024 and at one point, every single Russian citizen crossing the border was placed in immigration detention.

“Proving your right to asylum is several times harder [while in detention]… because detainees have no access to the internet and many have no access to lawyers,” Nikolaev explained. “Many had evidence stored on their phones and laptops, which had been confiscated by immigration authorities.”

She also told TV Rain that, based on her own experience, ICE policies seem discriminatory. In one case from her practice, a Belarusian man and his Russian wife crossed the border together, but only the latter was detained.

Detainees interviewed by Novaya Gazeta Europe, an offshoot of the famous Russian broadsheet, say ICE facilities are now full of Russians, who are held the longest, in harsh conditions. Detainees from other countries are released much faster.

“It’s just a regular prison – no different from what we see in Hollywood movies: uniforms, walking only in single file, standing in a line, etc.,” a former detainee, Vasily, told Novaya Gazeta Europe. “Some people with serious illnesses were getting no medical treatment at all. Asthmatics, roughly speaking, are just left to die.”

Russian human rights activist Vladimir Osechkin has been following the situation on his YouTube channel, Gulagu.net. In one of his videos, he says, “if someone had told me a year or two ago that I would be talking about human rights violations, about violations of Russians’ rights, not in Russia but in the US, I would not have believed it.“

A former detainee from Russia, Vladislav, spoke to Gulagu.net about spending 444 days in a US detention center. He said he felt abandoned by Russian opposition leaders. A former volunteer for the late Alexei Navalny’s organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), he asked for a letter confirming that he was in danger in Russia.

“Unfortunately, it’s very hard to get in touch with FBK at all if you are just a regular volunteer, not a headquarters leader there,” Vladislav said. “It’s nearly impossible to get the right documents. My friend on the outside in California kept leaving comments on their Instagram, but no one ever responded.”

The letter that FBK eventually issued to Vladislav was very generic. Osechkin of Gulagu.net said many people do not realize that, when applying for political asylum, it’s crucial to provide detailed accounts of the horrors of Russian prisons, as US judges are unaware of them. Due to the lack of resources in detention centers, detainees often do not know about such nuances, which increases their risk of deportation.

Activists from post-Soviet countries have filed a lawsuit demanding the release of their detained compatriots, accusing US immigration authorities of discrimination. Russian opposition politician Lyubov Sobol wrote on X that 276 detainees are included in the lawsuit.

One of them is Polina Guseva, an activist and volunteer in several opposition projects, who remains behind bars in the US. On her Telegram channel (which she runs with the help of fellow activists), Guseva wrote that the judge dismissed the claim of discrimination in her case, siding with ICE officers, as they have the right to make decisions on parole for arriving aliens, not the courts.

“I was ready to fight this while in detention – I only feared that it would drag on and that’s exactly what happened,” Guseva wrote. “But for many, this is an even more disappointing outcome. Not everyone can fight a case here – it’s finding, hiring and paying for a lawyer, collecting evidence, gathering witness testimonies. You need do all that without access to your own money or the internet.”