Life Under Trump: Migrants Win Asylum, Yet Remain Locked Up

When Arsenii crossed the border at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in September with an appointment to begin his asylum process after fleeing Russia, the first thing he heard from U.S. officials distressed him.

“Fucking Russians,” Arsenii said the officer said to him.

Almost a week later, officials transferred him from the port to Otay Mesa Detention Center, a long-term holding facility in San Diego for people in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
 

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Arsenii, like other immigrants who spoke with Capital & Main, asked not to be fully identified due to ongoing safety concerns both in and outside the United States.

He waited for more than five months for the opportunity to explain how he fled his homeland because of his LGBTQ+ and anti-war activism and now needed protection in front of an immigration judge. On March 3, the judge granted him asylum, which would allow him to live and work in the United States and become a permanent resident. 

But Arsenii remained in U.S. government custody, one of many Russians stuck in ICE detention facilities after proving that they qualify for refugee status due to policies from both the Biden and Trump administrations. He said an ICE official told him that he would not be allowed to leave anytime soon.

“I’m irritated. I’m depressed. I’m sad,” Arsenii said on a phone call from the detention center. “I don’t understand why I have to waste my time here, staying here when I already managed to get a status for myself. I’m a refugee. I don’t understand. I cannot comprehend why they don’t want to let me out and to proceed with my future life here.”

In the meantime, Arsenii said, he had to hide his sexual orientation because the facility told him that it wouldn’t be able to protect him from homophobic detainees. He said some have found out anyway and bullied him. 

Arsenii said he tried to keep himself hopeful through meditation, exercise and reading, but he struggled sometimes, especially when he woke up in a panic from nightmares about being returned to Russia.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

Capital & Main spoke with more than a half-dozen Russian men in the same situation as Arsenii. The men said they knew of other cases as well, and that many of their wives are also still detained. 

According to several immigration lawyers, at some point during the Biden administration, officials began holding Russians and people from other countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union for long periods of time, often choosing to detain them for the full length of their cases rather than releasing them from ports of entry or after they passed initial screenings, as typically happened with other nationalities. 

Now that Donald Trump is president, those lawyers said that government attorneys employed by ICE are appealing any Russian asylum win, and that ICE is choosing to keep the Russians in custody while those appeals move through the bureaucratic process, which can take years.

‘Zero Tolerance to Migrants’

When Anton crossed into the U.S. at the San Diego-Tijuana border with his partner and his partner’s mother, he thought they had finally found safety. He hoped he and his boyfriend would be able to get married, something forbidden in Russia.

The family of three crossed the border at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in August using the phone application CBP One that, under the Biden administration, allowed asylum seekers to request appointments with Customs and Border Protection to enter the country.

“We were told that we’re going to have to spend the night in the facility, and then they would release us the next morning,” Anton said. “I’ve never been lied to worse.”

They waited several days in custody at the port of entry before officials sent them to Otay Mesa Detention Center.

At the beginning of January, the three won asylum in the U.S. A judge granted them protection based on Russia’s persecution of gay men. But they, too, remain in custody.

ICE has kept Anton and his partner in different housing units. Because they are not married, they do not have visitation rights, Anton said. ICE transferred his partner’s mother to a site in Louisiana.

He said the experience has been traumatizing.

“They locked me here with homophobic people, and immediately I heard whispers behind my back about my orientation, about my hair that was green, about how I walk and talk,” Anton said. “[There] was nowhere to hide, nowhere to escape anymore. I spent a good amount of time crying under my blanket and shaking.”

He said some facility staff bullied him as well. 

“I knew that I had to go through this,” he said. “I didn’t have any other options. I couldn’t be released until I win my court [case].”

At his hearing, the ICE attorney didn’t put up a legal fight, Anton said. When the judge granted them asylum, he and his boyfriend cried for joy, he said. 

But the attorney said the government would appeal the case. The government filed that appeal about a month later, at the end of its appeal window, he said.

He cried again, this time in despair, for hours, he said.

“I didn’t feel the earth beneath me,” Anton said. “It was hard to accept that I proved everything but they appealed without filing any reason, without explaining.”

An ICE policy document from 2004 says that people who win asylum should generally be released even if the agency is appealing the judge’s decision. 

Anton said he took a printed copy of that policy to his deportation officer. He asked if it was still in effect.

“He said, ‘Well, yes and no. Now, there’s a new president, zero tolerance to migrants,’” Anton recalled. “So basically he admitted that they are not following their own policies anymore, that they are acting unlawfully. He admitted that. And I feel punished for winning my asylum.”

Anton said that he is scared to spend more time in custody, especially because of the homophobia that he is facing. 

“My physical and mental health are getting worse day by day,” Anton said. “I feel that they’re continuing to traumatize my soul that is traumatized by my past, and they’re making it worse right now.”

A Dinner Disrupted

A man from Uzbekistan, which was formerly part of the Soviet Union, said he was on his way to meet a couple of new friends he had recently met at the beach for dinner at Mona Lisa, an Italian restaurant in San Francisco, when ICE arrested him and sent him to Golden State Annex, a detention facility in McFarland, California.

He’d entered the U.S. with a CBP One appointment at the Calexico Port of Entry in July 2023, and officials had initially decided that he could live freely in the U.S. while he went through the court process for asylum.

A few months later, they appeared to change their minds.

According to his attorney, Mario Valenzuela, ICE decided to investigate his client as a potential terrorist because of the route the man had taken to reach the U.S. But even after a joint task force cleared the man, ICE still wouldn’t release him, Valenzuela said.

The man said the government in Uzbekistan tortured him for participating in student protests. He said he even had to have surgery on his head from the injuries he suffered. 

He won his case in January when an immigration judge granted him asylum. The government filed its appeal on the last day of the appeal window.

“I’ve been here two Christmases, two New Year’s. It’s too sad,” the man said. “And my birthday.”

He said that through the experience, he has learned to appreciate every moment of freedom that may come his way. 

“I’m faithful if God wills, I will get out, and I will start my life over,” the man said. “I’m going to take care of every single moment on the outside.”

He has a journal that he writes and draws in to help pass the time. Some of the pages have doodles of Minnie Mouse and Hello Kitty characters. He thinks about what he wants for his future — marriage, a family, a peaceful life.

And, he hopes to finally one day get to try the food at the Mona Lisa restaurant.

“I just didn’t show up to the dinner,” the man said. “I don’t even have [my friends’] numbers right now. They don’t even know right now, I think, I’m in here.”

Attorney Valenzuela said that he understands why the security screenings happened, but he does not understand why his client is still detained.

“I don’t want anybody to come here that’s a terrorist. There’s a side of me that says, ‘Good, do that. That’s your job,’” Valenzuela said. “But he’s been cleared. The court granted asylum. There’s really no reason for him to stay there any longer. He should be out and about.”

Getting Out

According to Arsenii’s attorney, Kirsten Zittlau, on the day of his hearing, the government attorney didn’t question his credibility or push much in the cross examination of his testimony. 

But, after Judge Ana Partida granted him asylum, the ICE attorney said the government would appeal the decision. Arsenii said the ICE attorney told him the decision to appeal was based on supervisors’ orders. 

Zittlau called the appeal “frivolous.”

The deportation officer in charge of whether Arsenii would get released told him that he would have to wait.

“‘We are not releasing you until all your appeals are finished. That is the position of Trump’s administration,’” Arsenii said the officer told him.

He said he still believes in standing up for human rights and encourages others to do the same.

“You should be loud,” he said before hanging up the detention center phone. “I was loud in Russia. Here in this democratic country, why wouldn’t I be? You have to fight for your own right.”

Toward the end of March, Zittlau received an update from ICE — the agency had decided to release Arsenii after all. It’s not clear why the agency changed its position. 

Arsenii said in a message after his release that he’s feeling much better now that he’s free, but he’s still processing the ways in which his time in detention affected him.

“Only now am I beginning to understand how my forced stay there made me very wary. Almost paranoid,” he wrote.

He said even the process of leaving detention, which included cold holding cells and shackles, made him feel like he was being treated as a criminal.

Still, he is relieved to be here.

“Now that I have a full court decision granting me asylum, I will not feel like I am under the sword of Damocles.”

Many of the other Russians who spoke with Capital & Main remain locked up.

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