Albert Khamitov fled Russia’s harsh anti-LGBQT laws last year after being brutally attacked in Moscow. He was delighted that an immigration judge granted him asylum in August.
He entered the U.S. from Mexico in May using the “CBP One” application — a new mobile app that immigrants are required to use to make appointments with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) if they want to file asylum forms with U.S. officials.
After Khamitov crossed the border in May, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers sent him to the Imperial Regional Detention Facility near Calexico in Imperial County situated on the Mexican border.
But before Khamitov could share the good news about his status with his family and friends, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials appealed his case. Instead of being released, he was sent to another detention facility in Nevada where Khamitov is now being kept with others seeking asylum.
“It’s torture to be here. I can’t sleep or eat and my health is deteriorating every day,” said Khamitov, who spoke to the Daily News from a phone that he was given access to at the Nevada detention center.
Khamitov is HIV positive and has a heart condition and he is among dozens of Russian citizens being kept at detention centers. The experience was so stressful and humiliating that he went on a hunger strike in October, refusing to eat and drink for four days. And according to Tur, Khamitov went on another hunger strike last Tuesday, Dec. 10. and his condition is worsening.
According to interviews with more than a dozen activists, lawyers, and migrants, DHS officials at migrant detention centers in at least five states are no longer releasing Russian asylum seekers — even after they secure the right to enter the U.S. Those five states include California, Arizona, Nevada, Florida and Louisiana.
This has unfolded during the Biden administration and some are worried that things will get worse under the Trump administration.
Dmitrii Tur, who lives in Northridge, co-founded Ours in the USA nonprofit. He said his group has a list of 55 names of Russian LGBTQ members who have remained at detention centers since May even after receiving asylum status.
“President Donald Trump’s return to power could make life difficult for LGBTQ refugees seeking protection in the U.S.,” Tur said in Russian.
“His promises to tighten immigration policies will affect virtually all groups of immigrants, including those already in detention centers, those awaiting entry into the country, those who have or have not yet applied for asylum, and those who have won or lost cases and are on appeal,” Tur said.
Interviews highlight more than 55 cases since mid-June in which Russian asylum seekers were granted the right to enter the U.S. but are still being held in detention centers.
Neither the Department of Homeland Security or Customs and Border Protection returned requests for comment for this story.
Kirill Surnachev, a co-founder and vice president of Ours in the USA, the nonprofit advocating on behalf of Russian-speaking LGBTQ asylum-seekers, said the Russians appear to be unfairly singled out for prolonged detentions.
“After June, immigration officials stopped releasing Russians,” said Surnachev, who lives in Hollywood. “Even people who won their immigration cases have remained in custody for months.”
He added, “There are people with HIV, cancers and other dangerous diseases and they are not being released.”
Surnachev runs an online community on the Telegram platform made up of Russian-speaking LGBTQ members called “Ours in the USA,” which lists about 1,400 members. But in the last few months, more than 40 people left the chat platform, saying they changed their minds about moving to the U.S. due to their fear of prolonged detention at immigration facilities.
They also fear being deported back to Russia, which is known for its harsh anti-LGBTQ laws.
“Deporting people back to Russia is like giving them a death sentence,” Surnachev said.
Tur, the co-founder of Ours in the USA. said that under Trump he is concerned that “tighter asylum procedures will likely lead to an increase in denials, especially for LGBTQ refugees, who will face stricter requirements to prove persecution (in their home country).”
He added, “While Trump claims to support the LGBTQ community, his immigration policies may disproportionately affect those seeking protection from persecution because of their sexuality or gender identity. Tighter procedures, reduction of resettlement programs and mass deportations put the safety and lives of many at risk.”
Tur, who crossed the border with his fiance Max in February 2023 without any problems, said of the 55 Russian LGBTQ members, “They fled discrimination in Russia to come to the U.S. and experience the same attitude they had back home.”
After learning what happened to Albert Khamitov, Tur and his team began working on a campaign demanding the release of Russian LGBTQ members.
It’s not impacting only LGBTQ immigrants. Nataliya Gavlin, the founder of Gavlin & Associates law firm in New York, said that before August, her Russian-speaking clients won their immigration cases and were promptly released from detention facilities. She said the situation changed in August, and since then “not a single parole has been approved (by an immigration judge).”
According to the U.S. Census, 600,000 Russian-speaking expats live in Southern California, most of them in Los Angeles and Orange counties. They have also settled in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
“There’s prejudice against Russians and I heard about it from (DHS) prosecutors who are working on cases of Russian citizens,” Gavlin said. “They apologize but they still appeal every single case of Russian asylum seekers.”
She said nearly all her Russian clients who crossed the U.S.-Mexican border legally in the last few months were given a form that says “security risk.” Most have been detained and separated — even from their minor children, some as young as two years old.
The Ponomorev family
When Lina Ponomoreva, living in a detention center in Arizona, learned that her husband Alexey had won his immigration case in mid-November, she couldn’t wait to share the news with their daughters Natalia and Anna.
After legally crossing the U.S.-Mexican border in August, Alexey Ponomorev, 43, was sent to a detention facility in Nevada. Lina and their older daughter Natalia, 20, were placed in a detention center in Arizona.
Their younger daughter, Anna, 15, was sent to a facility in Arizona operated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services created to assist refugees and “asylees” — noncitizens in the U.S. who can’t or don’t want to return to their home country due to persecution or fear of persecution.
Ponomoreva and her husband also received forms that marked them as a “security risk.”
The couple left Russia last year after Alexey protested Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and was detained twice in 2022 and twice again in 2023. And he was arrested again last year following an anti-war rally.
Their older daughter Natalia had criticized the war during a conversation with friends at a coffee shop in their hometown in the southern part of Russia when someone overheard their discussion and called the police. Natalia was detained and released the same day in 2022, but her parents were scared enough to plan to flee the country.
“We were threatened in Russia that authorities would take away our daughter because of our political views,” Lina said, crying during a phone interview in late November from the Alloy Detention Center in Arizona where she is detained with her daughter Natalia.
“We crossed the border and fled here only to find our child taken away from us,” she said of her younger daughter, Anna, who remains in the Arizona facility.
After learning that Alexey Ponomorev had won his immigration case, Lina couldn’t wait to share the news with Anna, who was separated from her parents at the border and sent to a shelter miles away in Arizona. Alexey has been detained at the Thousand Detention Center in Nevada and shares a cell with Khamitov.
“My daughter (Anna) became an adult overnight once she was separated from us,” Lina said. “Every time she calls she cries on the phone. She misses us a lot.’’
A few hours after gathering his clothes and personal belongings, Alexey returned to his cell at the detention center and told his neighbor that he wouldn’t be released. His wife was devastated, especially knowing that Anna would remain separated from her parents.
“Other children see their parents being released and leaving the shelter, but my daughter is still there,” Lina said. “We don’t know when we’re going to see her.”
The issue of children being taken away from their families at the border gained national attention during the Trump administration and his “zero tolerance” policy, which allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to detain parents and send their children to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Advocates say the goal of the policy was to criminally prosecute migrants who crossed the border illegally.
In 2018, a federal judge ordered a halt to separations at the U.S. border and allowed families to reunite with their minor children.
The decision was a major victory for immigration advocates although the earlier practice didn’t completely disappear.
A recent report from UCLA’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy highlighted that under the Biden administration immigration officials continued separating families, but its tactics were not as punitive as the ones known during the Trump era.
The UCLA report accused the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency of having a “well-documented culture: one marked by cruel indifference, in which CBP operates without transparency or accountability for its practices that predictably result in family separations, even where those practices defy existing guidance.”
“CBP’s culture is one of the primary obstacles to the implementation of policies that promote family unity. It has previously been characterized as a culture that protects and rewards abuse,” according to the report.
Melissa Adamson, an attorney at the National Center for Youth Law in New York, who focuses on immigration, said research has demonstrated that the separation of a child from a trusted caregiver has a profound impact on a child’s growth and development.
“Parents or a trusted adult are key to a child’s ability to cope with a traumatic experience. So when a child’s caregiver or adult is not present, the child can experience significant and prolonged stress, and that can have a profound impact on the child,” Adamson said.
“Children might have difficulty sleeping, high anxiety, depression, and heightened responses to perceived threats,” she said. “Children, especially young children, might experience behavioral regression – reverting to an earlier developmental stage.”
Lina speaks with Anna almost daily and says her daughter feels safe although “lonely and heartbroken.”
For Halloween, Anna dressed as an inmate.
“She told me she wanted to wear a prisoner’s costume and look like her mother and father,” Lina said. “Other kids wanted to dress up for fun, but our daughter wanted to show her support for us.”
The Ponomorevs and Khamitov did not know when they would be released. “My family is suffering only because I asked for asylum in this country,” Alexey said in a phone interview from the Nevada detention center. “My daughter (Anna) will be traumatized for the rest of her life after being separated from us.”
“All of us Russians are shocked,” Khamitov said. “I fled Putin’s regime because it called gay men like me terrorists. I hoped to get refugee status in the U.S., but now ICE officers won’t let me out.”
