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Harvard researcher Kseniia Petrova has been charged criminally with smuggling goods -- e.g., frog embryos and samples thereof on slides, etc. -- into the United States on the same day the judge overseeing her habeas case questioned the government's authority to revoke her visa.

The administration told that judge, Christina Reiss, that they intend to send Petrova back to Russia, despite her fear of arrest because of her support for Ukraine. Reiss scheduled a bail hearing on May 28, "potentially setting the stage for Ms. Petrova’s release": www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/h...

In the meantime, the charging papers are little more than an affidavit from a Homeland Security Investigations agent and this criminal complaint.

Petrova was detained at Logan Airport on February 16. If the case against her is righteous and just, why did it take the feds two months after detaining her to file so little?

And why was she arrested the same day that a federal judge in another court expressed doubt that customs officials had authority to revoke her visa? Something smells off here -- and it's not the "biological material" Petrova failed to declare on her customs forms.