In late August, a group of Russians who had asked and not received political asylum from the U.S. government found themselves back home. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had put them on a circuitous route: after being picked up from an airport in Alexandria, Louisiana, they made stops in the Caribbean before moving onwards to Cairo, Egypt.

From Cairo, a plane took them to Moscow.

Those on board had spent months trying to persuade the U.S. government not to send them back to Russia. In the case of one man, Artem Vovchenko, he was doing so after deserting the Russian military. Activists who spoke with those deported told TPM that Vovchenko and another man were detained upon arrival in Moscow.

The episode has caused panic among Russian dissidents and exiles. Many of them fled the country in the years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Thousands sought refuge in the U.S., telling immigration authorities that they fear imprisonment or persecution

Now, anti-Putin Russian activist groups are warning against seeking refuge in the U.S. One group, the Russian Anti-War Committee, issued a statement last month saying that for those wishing to seek asylum in the U.S., “recent events demonstrate that the likelihood of ending up back in the hands of Putinist authorities are incredibly high.” Prominent Russian opposition politicians, including Alexei Navalny’s widow, recently asked the Canadian government in an open letter to provide asylum to Russians facing deportation from the U.S.

For individual Russians who left political repression in Russia and sought a new life in the U.S., it feels like a betrayal. “It makes me feel very depressed,” said Sergey Vlasov, who runs the Russian Refugee Foundation and is also associated with the Anti-War Committee. A former local councilman in a district of Moscow, he left Russia in 2022 and eventually came to New York City where he first found work at a bicycle rental company in Central Park.

“If you really need asylum, if you really need a new place to live, we expected the United States to welcome us,” he told TPM.

For the Trump administration, the removals are one episode in a massive effort to turn huge parts of the federal bureaucracy towards mass detention and deportation of foreigners. ICE is ballooning in size after Congress gave it a massive cash infusion earlier this summer; that’s meant more personnel to detain and deport, and more charter flights like the one that took the dozens of Russians to Cairo.

Rumors about the August removals first began to filter out over online Telegram chatrooms for detained Russians on August 26. Flight records obtained by ICE Flight Monitor, a group that tracks removal fights, show a charter flight leaving Alexandria, Louisiana on August 26 before making stops in Guantanamo Bay and Puerto Rico.

From there, records obtained by the group show, the plane continued on to Cairo, where it landed on August 27. It purportedly made additional stops in Doha and New Delhi.

In Cairo, the Russians were transferred to a plane that took them to Moscow, activists told TPM. After their arrival in the Russian capital, Russian opposition groups expressed surprise and some revulsion at the removals, though some of their accounts differ from one another.

Per Margarita Kuchusheva, an immigration lawyer who works with Russians seeking asylum, the dozens of Russian asylum seekers included some who did not want to return to Russia, and others who had agreed to voluntary deportation after spending time in immigration detention in the U.S.

Kuchusheva told TPM that she had gathered the accounts of several of those on board the plane. Once in Cairo, some people asked for their travel documents so they could fly elsewhere; they were refused, she said. At least one person was handcuffed and forcibly put on the plane after refusing to board, she said.

Upon arrival in Moscow, Vovchenko, the Russian deserter, was detained, per multiple accounts.

According to Dmitry Valuev, the leader of Russian America for Democracy in Russia, another exile group, Vovchenko was wanted in Russia after leaving a military base at which he was stationed. All of those removed were questioned by Russian security services upon arrival in Moscow, multiple people told TPM. Activists and friends of those deported said that most were released after questioning, while Vovchenko was detained.

Deporting the group to Russia required at least some diplomatic coordination with the Russian government. U.S. authorities typically submit proof that a person they wish to deport is a citizen of the country to the embassy of the person’s citizenship, which then issues an authorization allowing the person to return. ICE officials will sometimes note how the person entered the country — via CBP One, for example, which suggests that the person was seeking asylum.

It’s not clear whether Trump’s August summit in Alaska with Vladimir Putin played any role in laying the diplomatic groundwork for the removal flight. A State Department spokesperson told TPM that “The Department of State does not comment on diplomatic relations with other countries. We refer you to the Department of Homeland Security on operational questions.” ICE declined to comment.

The Trump administration’s whole-hog approach to deportations has resulted in asylum seekers being sent home en masse, or in some languishing in immigration detention indefinitely as they fight their removal. One asylum seeker, Ilia Chernov, spent months in a rural Louisiana facility after winning his case.

It’s also created a chaotic and often piecemeal approach to removals. TPM spoke with one Russian asylum seeker who was deported via a commercial flight to Morocco with a connecting ticket to Moscow; he told TPM that he was able to buy a ticket to Turkey in Morocco and thereby avoid removal to Moscow. Another Russian asylum seeker who spoke to TPM was less fortunate: during his layover in Morocco, he wasn’t provide access to his passport and was placed on a flight back to Russia.

For the Russian activists, the situation remains incredibly dispiriting. Kuchusheva, the immigration lawyer, told TPM that many are seeking new ways to flee Russia again.

“Many Russians by default know that America is the land where human rights are protected and respected, an ‘antithesis’ to the Russian Federation, so many flee there for protection,” Kuchushev wrote to TPM. “We are very concerned about the situation.”