ICE detained Russian asylum-seeker at Buffalo airport, held her nearly a month

On July 20, 2026, plainclothes ICE officers approached Alevtina Soboleva, a 59-year-old Russian asylum-seeker from Sunnyvale, California, at the Buffalo, New York airport for a "documents check" as she and her daughter, Daria, prepared to fly home from a vacation to Niagara Falls. The officers did not identify themselves as belonging to ICE or another immigration agency before taking Soboleva into custody, despite her asylum application — filed in April 2022 after Russia's invasion of Ukraine made her and her family decide it was unsafe to return to Russia — still being under review. Daria Soboleva said she could not contact her mother for four days after the detention.

According to Daria's account of her mother's description, Soboleva was shackled with handcuffs and chains and placed inside a cage with poor air circulation as she was transported between detention facilities; she was refused a bathroom and had to urinate on herself, was refused water when she asked for it, and suffered panic attacks. After arriving at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, Louisiana, she complained of chills and asked for warm clothing but was not provided any, and staff confiscated fever medication and a hat given to her by a fellow detainee. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Soboleva "is an illegal alien from Russia who was admitted to the United States lawfully in 2021 but failed to depart the country in the required time frame," and said "any allegations of poor medical care and inability to contact family are false" — a denial that addressed contact and medical care but did not dispute the account of shackling, the cage, or denial of water and bathroom access.

On August 12, 2026, an immigration judge set Soboleva's bond at $10,000. She was released and returned to San Francisco International Airport on August 16, nearly a month after her detention began, while her asylum application remains pending.