Viktor Murkihanov, an anti-war activist from Irkutsk, Russia, is among hundreds worried that their decision to seek asylum in the U.S. will end with a deportation flight back to Russia.Supplied
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is said to be preparing to deport another planeload of Russian asylum seekers back to an uncertain future in their home country, as the Canadian government drags its feet on a request to open its doors to Russian dissidents.
ICE has already sent at least 80 people back to Russia this summer aboard a pair of chartered flights that were met on arrival in Moscow by agents from the FSB security service. Activists say a third mass-deportation flight is expected in the coming weeks.
Vladislav Krasnov believes there’s a high chance he’ll be on it, unless Canada intervenes to help dissidents and anti-war activists like him.
The 27-year-old helped organize some of the massive protests against Mr. Putin’s rule in 2018 headed by opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who was found dead in his prison colony in the Russian Arctic last year.
Russian dissidents ask Canada to take in colleagues facing deportation in the U.S.
Despite letters supporting his cause from some of Russia’s most prominent human-rights organizations, Mr. Krasnov recently had his asylum case rejected in Louisiana, on the grounds that the judge doubted he would really face persecution if he were returned home.
“It was the same logic as the Russian police have,” Mr. Krasnov said, laughing bitterly. “When you are killed, come back and we can talk.”
He sees two possible outcomes now. He’ll either be detained and deported back to Russia, and will serve a lengthy jail term, or the Canadian government will listen to a plea from three leading Russian opposition figures – including Mr. Navalny’s widow – and open its doors to Russian dissidents expelled from the U.S.
“The Russian government knows about where I am, why I’m here. If I will be deported, they will be waiting for me and I will be in prison – I don’t know for how long,” Mr. Krasnov said in a telephone interview on Friday. “I hope that Canada will accept us, because all the world is going crazy and I hope that Canada won’t be.”
Last week, three leading members of the anti-Putin opposition – Yulia Navalnaya, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin – published an open letter in The Globe and Mail, calling on Prime Minister Mark Carney to open Canada’s doors to Russian dissidents at risk of being deported from the U.S.
The initial reception from Ottawa has been lukewarm. In a statement e-mailed to The Globe, Laura Blondeau, director of communications to Immigration Minister Lena Diab, made no promises, saying only that any requests for asylum would be considered on their merits.
She also noted that the Safe Third Country Agreement, the refugee pact between Canada and the U.S. that prevents most asylum seekers who pass through one country to claim protection in the other, would apply to these cases.
When Mr. Krasnov arrived in the U.S. in August, 2023 – after fleeing the draft that Mr. Putin had introduced in Russia – he thought he was entering a country where justice prevailed, and where there would be sympathy for people like him who had stood up to the Kremlin.
He had waited in Mexico for two months until he received an appointment notice on CBP One, an app launched by the Biden administration (shut down after Donald Trump’s return to the White House) that allowed applicants to book a hearing with immigration officers and cross the border legally.
Instead of the promised hearing about his asylum claim, Mr. Krasnov was detained on arrival. Though he had crossed into California, he was put into hand-and-leg cuffs and transferred to an immigration detention centre in Louisiana, which Mr. Krasnov said has a reputation among asylum seekers for being “a deportation state.”
He was held in the Allen Parish Public Safety Complex for 444 days, a period during which his asylum case was heard and rejected by Judge Cassie Thogersen, who has a track record of denying more than 90 per cent of immigration claims, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a database maintained by Syracuse University.
He’s free in California for now, but he says ICE kept his passport, driver’s licence and other identification. He worries he could be detained again at any time.
Nearly 150 Canadians held in ICE custody this year, including two toddlers, data show
Meanwhile, the first deportation flight took off from Alexandria, La., in June. The 30 Russian asylum seekers onboard were escorted as far as Cairo by ICE agents, then taken onward to Moscow by Egyptian authorities.
A second deportation flight carrying 50 more people – including Andrei Vovchenko, a 25-year-old former soldier facing criminal charges for deserting his unit – followed the same route late last month.
There’s been no formal announcement about the mass deportations, which human-rights activists fear are the result of some quiet deal between Mr. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“It could not have been done without an agreement between the two countries,” said Dmitry Valuev, co-founder of Russian America for Democracy in Russia, a Washington-based non-profit that has been aiding Russian asylum seekers.
“We are hearing that the immigration authorities are assembling another flight as we speak.”
Polina Guseva, a 30-year-old activist who was also part of Mr. Navalny’s team in Moscow, said the possibility that Canada will open its doors is a hot topic among the 100 or so Russian women being held alongside her in the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, a facility that human-rights activists say is notorious for the poor conditions the all-female detainees are held in.
Russian activist Polina Guseva with Alexey Navalny before he was detained and died in prison.Supplied
“People are hopeful. They’re following this news,” Ms. Guseva said, speaking by payphone from inside the detention centre, where she has been held for the past 14 months.
Ms. Guseva’s asylum claim was one of the few to be accepted by Louisiana’s immigration court. Her victory proved short-lived, however, as the case was immediately appealed by the Department of Homeland Security.
Ms. Guseva says she plans to fight to stay in the U.S., but that many of the other detainees would gladly accept even temporary refuge in Canada so that they could get out of ICE custody without being sent back to Russia.
Ms. Guseva said the number of Russian women being held in the South Louisiana complex had fallen by nearly half since the start of summer as the deportations have accelerated.
“I would ask the Canadian Prime Minister to consider giving the option to Russian asylum seekers in the U.S., that they at least be allowed to go to Canada for a short time so that they can be safe,” she said during her brief phone call from inside the detention centre.
Viktor Murkihanov, an anti-war activist from Irkutsk, in Russia’s Far East, is another of hundreds worried that their decision to seek asylum in the U.S. will end with a deportation flight back to Russia.
Mr. Murikhanov is an ethnic Buryat, a group indigenous to Siberia, and hails from one of the poorest regions in Russia. The 41-year-old banker says he’s a supporter of Mr. Navalny, as well as the Free Buryatia movement, and took part in anti-war protests.
By August, 2022, “after the police began to show interest in me,” Mr. Murikhanov decided it was time to leave. He arrived in the U.S. the next month, driving into California from Mexico with his wife and their teenage son.
After an almost three-year wait, Mr. Murikhanov’s application for asylum was denied on Aug. 5. The judge ruled that he hadn’t proved his connection to Free Buryatia, even as the Free Buryatia Foundation acknowledged him as a member and published updates about his ordeal on its social-media channels.
“According to the lawyers I consulted after the denial, two years ago I would have almost certainly won the case,” Mr. Murikhanov said in an exchange of messages last week. “I think this is really the policy of the Trump administration.”
Mr. Murikhanov is appealing his case, but doesn’t hold out much hope of being allowed to remain in the U.S. Like the others, he’s hoping Canada will offer he and his family the protection he’s been denied in Mr. Trump’s America.
“It is extremely important for me not to be deported to Russia, as this is a matter of safety for me and my family. If Canada gives me such an opportunity in the event of deportation from the United States, I will be very grateful.”