A federal judge in Vermont has ordered the release of a Russian-born Harvard Medical School scientist from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, agreeing with the researcher’s attorney that she was unlawfully detained. 

However, the ruling by Judge Christina Reiss, which came at the end of a roughly 90-minute hearing Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Burlington, won’t immediately mean freedom for 31-year-old Kseniia Petrova.

ICE had detained Petrova after she arrived at Boston Logan International Airport from France in February and did not properly declare frog embryo research samples. She has since been charged criminally in federal court in Massachusetts for allegedly trying to smuggle the frog embryos into the United States.

Petrova remains detained on that criminal charge. 

Her attorney, Gregory Romanovsky, said in court Wednesday that he expected his client to have a hearing in that case as early as next week in Massachusetts when her release on the criminal charge could be considered. 

Petrova’s ICE detention case landed in federal court in Vermont because, after she was taken into custody at the Boston airport in February, she was held at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility, Vermont’s women’s prison, in South Burlington for a week before ICE transferred her to a facility in Louisiana.

Petrova brought a legal action – a habeas petition – in Vermont’s federal court during the week she was in custody in the state, alleging she was being unlawfully held by federal authorities.

Reiss’s decision on Wednesday makes her the third federal judge in Vermont to grant a person’s release from ICE custody in a high-profile immigration case since President Donald Trump took office in January. 

Earlier this month, Federal Judge William K. Sessions III granted the release of a Tufts University student who had been held in ICE custody for a short time in the state. And, in April, federal Judge Geoffrey Crawford ordered the release of a Columbia University student living in Vermont when he was taken into ICE custody.

Reiss, Crawford and Sessions all preside in federal courts in Burlington.

In all three Vermont federal cases, the rulings came over the objections from attorneys from the Trump administration’s U.S. Department of Justice.

Reiss, in ordering Petrova’s release from ICE custody Wednesday, sided with the scientist’s lawyer, who argued that his client had been unlawfully detained by federal immigration authorities. Often, according to Petrova’s attorney, the penalty for failing to declare non-dangerous items was simply a fine or forfeiture. 

The judge during Wednesday’s hearing spoke of the researcher’s groundbreaking work as well as her lack of a criminal history. 

“Her activities in the United States did nothing to threaten public safety,” Reiss said of Petrova. 

“To the contrary,” the judge added. “She has furthered this country’s interest in finding a cure and treatment for cancer in the area of biological and regenerative research. Her work is described as excellent, exceptional and of national importance by people qualified to render those opinions.”

The research samples Petrova was accused of bringing into the United States, Reiss said, were “wholly non-hazardous, non-toxic, nonliving” and “posed a threat to no one.” 

In a federal court filing in the Vermont case, Petrova’s attorney described the incident leading to her custody as an “inadvertent failure” to declare on a customs form frog embryos that she was bringing to the United States from a research facility in France when she had traveled on vacation.

The request for the frog embryos, Petrova’s lawyer wrote in the filing, came from the leader of a research group at Harvard Medical School “under whose leadership she works.” 

U.S. Customs and Border Protection cancelled Petrova’s visa after finding the frog embryos, and federal authorities have said they were seeking to send her to Russia. 

Petrova, according to court filings and in published media accounts, has said she fears returning to Russia, where she has faced past persecution for her political activities, including protesting against the war in Ukraine. 

Reiss, in ordering Petrova’s release from ICE custody Wednesday, addressed her concern about the possibility of returning to Russia.

“Ms. Petrova’s life and wellbeing are in peril if she is deported to Russia,” the judge said, adding: “The government has made it clear and unequivocal that it intends to deport her to Russia unless she is granted asylum, and that it will not allow her to depart to another country where she will be safe and where she has legitimate immigration status.”

In a statement, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has said Petrova was “lawfully” detained after “lying to federal officers about carrying substances into the country.” 

Romanovsky, Petrova’s lawyer, had called on Reiss during the hearing to issue an order preventing ICE from arresting his client again if she were released from custody on the federal criminal charge in Massachusetts. 

Reiss did not grant that request, saying she didn’t want to prohibit an executive branch agency from taking “future actions which are uncertain.”

Insead, the judge pointed to comments during the hearing made by Jeffrey Hartman, a U.S. Department of Justice attorney, who said he was not aware of any plans by ICE to re-arrest Petrova if she were to be released on the Massachusetts case. 

Petrova took part in the hearing by video from the ICE detention center in Louisiana, where she has been held since shortly after she was taken into custody and transferred from Vermont. 

Four friends, colleagues and researchers testified during Wednesday’s hearing on Petrova’s behalf, attesting to her scientific skills and nonviolent demeanor, with one associate calling her “beyond kind.”