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The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is reaching every American who sees protesters skirmishing with police on the news or video of masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raiding Home Depot parking lots in their social media feeds.
On Tuesday, New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested by federal officers, some wearing masks, as he tried to accompany a migrant after an immigration court hearing.
But there are countless stories that will touch Americans in their daily lives. Anyone who takes the time to look will find the immigration crackdown right next to them.
That’s what I found — at two degrees of separation — when I heard from a friend that her child’s special needs aide’s father, Arthur Newmark, was detained after being in the US for 10 years while he sought asylum from Russia.
Detained after an asylum hearing
Newmark’s lawyer says he did everything by the book as he sought asylum, filing paperwork in 2015 while he was in the country legally. It wasn’t until last month, days after an asylum hearing with US Citizenship and Information Services, that Newmark was detained. ICE placed him into custody and took jurisdiction of his case from the asylum office.
Newmark was detained by ICE agents on May 31 after he went outside his Northern Virginia home with his pet bird, Bernie.
The agents told Newmark’s wife, Kristina, to collect Bernie the bird, along with her husband’s wallet and phone. The agents left with Newmark and took him to a detention facility in rural Virginia.
It was only after his detention began that Newmark’s family and lawyer learned ICE is now saying that he had overstayed his visa by 10 years. His lawyer vehemently disagrees.
Fleeing Russia
The Newmarks say they have legitimate fears for their lives in Russia; their lawyer Elizabeth Krukova showed me what appears to be a posting for Arthur on a registry of wanted persons there and said he came to the US because “he was exposing corruption in Russia at the highest levels.”
The entire family legally changed their names after living for three years in the United States.
They argue they have followed the rules while seeking asylum and building their lives in Virginia, but now Newmark could face the possibility of deportation.
It’s not clear exactly why Arthur Newmark was taken into custody or why, after 10 years, the US government has now determined, days after his long-awaited asylum interview, that he had actually overstayed his visa. It was at that interview that Newmark, over the course of six hours, explained to immigration officials the danger he faces in Russia.
I reached out to US Citizenship and Immigration Services to comment on Newmark’s case. It declined to comment and referred me to ICE, which has not yet responded.
Newmark’s lawyer still says he has a strong asylum case, but the family’s life has been turned upside down while he spent weeks inside a detention facility.
His Russian-born children, one of whom is in college and one of whom just graduated from high school in Virginia, are now wondering if they’ll be sent back to Russia, the country their parents fled, or somewhere else. A third child was born in the US.
An immigration judge granted Newmark bond this week while his case proceeds, but now his wife and children have also been told to appear before an immigration judge in July, days before his next hearing. The asylum request was made in Newmark’s name and the entire family has been living in immigration limbo.
I spoke several times with the oldest daughter, Eva, a student at a community college who is studying to be a financial planner. She told me she chose to stay home and start a two-year college because she could pay tuition by the class instead of for a full year.
“If we get deported, I don’t have to lose a lot of money,” she said. That’s also partly why the family has not purchased a house in the US.
“Who wants a mortgage, if you don’t know if you’re going to stay in the country again, right?” Eva said in flawless English, as she translated for her mother, who speaks English, but not as fluently.
While Arthur abandoned his Russian career as a lawyer when he came to the US — he has worked in trucking and in grocery stores — Kristina has built a business teaching music lessons. Her youngest son, an American citizen born in the US, has been successful in music competitions, she said.
Arthur and Kristina initially came to the US in 2015 for her to have a medical procedure, but they were threatened in Moscow before leaving, according to Kristina. Arthur went back to Moscow through the border of another country, according to Eva, and arranged for the two Russian-born children to be flown to the US. They applied for asylum that same year, while in the US legally, and changed their names in 2018 to make it harder for them to be found by Russia.
The Newmarks chose to seek asylum in the US believing that it would not deport them back to Russia.
“It was, first, opposite side of the world, and because we knew that this country has more rights and opportunities,” Kristina said.
Their saga remains unresolved
Even though “this time is a little bit uncertain for the whole country,” Eva said, she still feels that in the US they can fight in court and have a lawyer represent them, which might not be the case in Russia.
While the Newmarks’ saga has been long and so far unresolved, the decade they have lived in the US without detention is not something more recent Russian asylum-seekers have experienced.
The Newmarks came to the US in 2015, after Russia annexed Crimea but long before it invaded Ukraine. Thousands have fled Russia for the US since the invasion of Ukraine, frequently waiting at the border with Mexico for an opportunity to claim asylum.
For most of President Joe Biden’s administration, those asylees, many of them critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin, were allowed to enter the country, or “paroled,” while their claims progressed through the system. Then, beginning in 2024, for reasons not entirely known, many ultimately found themselves spending a year or more in detention. A group of detainees sued the Biden administration, arguing that Russian speakers were being discriminated against.
The lawyer who brought that suit, Curtis Morrison, told me the issue is essentially moot now since the Trump administration wants to detain anyone seeking asylum rather than let them live in the country as the Newmarks have.
“The Trump administration is taking the view that nobody gets that,” Morrison said. “So basically, everybody’s being subjected to what the Russians were subjected to a year ago.”