{"id":347112,"date":"2025-08-15T17:50:22","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T17:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/347112\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T17:50:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T17:50:22","slug":"how-an-asylum-seeker-in-u-s-custody-ended-up-in-a-russian-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/347112\/","title":{"rendered":"How an Asylum Seeker in U.S. Custody Ended Up in a Russian Prison"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the afternoon of August 15, 2024, Leonid Melekhin, a thirty-three-year-old small-business owner from Perm, a Russian city near the Ural Mountains, approached the U.S. border in Calexico, California. The previous winter, he had flown to Mexico, leaving behind his wife and their two small children. He spent the next eight months waiting for a notification in CBP One, an app that the Biden Administration launched in 2023 as an authorized portal to file asylum claims. Now, the app told Melekhin, he had an appointment to present himself to U.S. immigration officers. Wearing a backpack and a black baseball cap, he took a selfie in front of a sign that read \u201cEntrada USA.\u201d<\/p>\n

Melekhin sent the photo to Yury Bobrov, an activist and political refugee who was also from Perm, on the messaging app Telegram. The two men had been in regular contact. Earlier, Melekhin had sent Bobrov another photo, of a small yellow poster hanging from a concrete bridge. Putin, the poster\u2019s text reads, is a \u201ckiller, fascist, usurper.\u201d Melekhin said that, on his last night in Russia, he had gone to Perm\u2019s Kommunalny Bridge and attached the poster to the railing. \u201cI couldn\u2019t resist,\u201d he told Bobrov. He had asked Bobrov to \u201cpost it somewhere,\u201d because \u201cit would be a shame if no one sees it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bobrov shared it on Telegram alongside the photo of Melekhin crossing the border. \u201cI felt that he might have wanted to strengthen his asylum case but also that he genuinely didn\u2019t want to leave Russia in total silence,\u201d Bobrov told me. \u201cWas it a strategic move or an impulse of the soul? I don\u2019t know, but I have no reason to doubt his motives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Less than a year later, a journalist in Perm published a story about a local court hearing: Melekhin had been arrested in Russia and charged with justifying terrorism, a crime that carries a potential five-year prison sentence. It was a rare instance of such a case being publicized, in which a Russian was deported from the U.S. to face a prison sentence back home. But little else was known of how he\u2019d ended up there.<\/p>\n

From the border, Melekhin was brought to the Imperial Regional Detention Facility, a holding center in Calexico run by a private company called the Management and Training Corporation. He was placed in a housing unit with dozens of other asylum seekers, including a number of Russians, and waited for his hearing with a judge. Melekhin thought he had a fairly strong case: for years, he had attended protests and volunteered with the Perm field office of Alexei Navalny<\/a>\u2019s political organization, which is now banned in Russia. \u201cEveryone knows Russia\u2019s problems,\u201d a relative of Melekhin\u2019s, who is still in Russia, told me. \u201cCorruption is rampant. Fair elections are nonexistent.\u201d The relative said, of Melekhin, \u201cIf he wasn\u2019t happy about something, he always stood his ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even in a midsize city such as Perm, Melekhin wasn\u2019t a recognizable activist. Bobrov called him an \u201cordinary, average, homespun guy who took an interest in the fate of his country.\u201d When I reached Sergei Ukhov, the former head of the Navalny field office in Perm, who now lives abroad, he didn\u2019t remember Melekhin. But, when he searched his photo archive, he found a picture of Melekhin at a protest in Perm, in 2017. Natalia Vavilova, another former co\u00f6rdinator for the field office, said, of Melekhin, \u201cI can\u2019t say he was a particularly active volunteer or regular presence in our headquarters.\u201d But she, too, had found traces of him: a text exchange from 2018, in which he discussed his plans to volunteer as an independent election monitor during that year\u2019s Presidential race. \u201cThat\u2019s definitely civic activism,\u201d Vavilova said. \u201cNo doubt about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2021, Melekhin was arrested at a pro-Navalny protest in Perm. Investigators attempted to pressure him to give testimony against others in Navalny\u2019s political organization, but he refused. In 2023, the year after Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, when nearly all protest activity was banned, he went to the center of Perm holding a sign that read \u201cFreedom to Navalny.\u201d He was almost immediately detained. At the station, one officer held his hands behind his back while another punched him in the stomach. Later, the police threatened him with forced conscription into the Russian Army. \u201cHe became seized by the idea of moving to the U.S.,\u201d Melekhin\u2019s relative said.<\/p>\n

Melekhin started to study English and to follow the stories of other Russians who had made the journey, including Bobrov. He decided to travel alone. His youngest child was only a year old at the time. \u201cNo one knew how long it would take or what conditions he\u2019d be living in along the way,\u201d the relative said. The plan was that Melekhin would secure legal status for himself and then find a way to reunite with his family in the U.S.<\/p>\n

I spoke with a number of Russians who had met Melekhin in the Imperial detention center, none of whom are named out of concerns for their safety. \u201cHe was in a positive mood,\u201d one of them, a citizen journalist from central Russia, said. He had launched self-funded investigations into malfeasance by local police and municipal officials, and was detained and questioned multiple times before he decided to seek asylum in the U.S. He and Melekhin met in the exercise yard. They were both optimistic about their cases. \u201cWe finally made it, at least this far,\u201d the other asylum seeker recalled them saying. \u201cSurely, they will listen to us, and at the end we will be offered help. All we have to do is wait.\u201d<\/p>\n

Melekhin\u2019s hearing was in December, 2024, four months into his detention at Imperial, and a year after he left his family in Russia. His case was assigned to a judge named Anne Kristina Perry, who was appointed as an immigration judge in 2018. \u201cShe is very kind, calm, professional, diligent,\u201d Raisa Stepanova, an immigration attorney in California who has represented several Russian asylum seekers, but not Melekhin, told me. \u201cBut her judicial reasoning doesn\u2019t always display a knowledge of how Russian police and law enforcement actually function.\u201d The citizen journalist from central Russia, whose case was also adjudicated by Perry, said, \u201cShe acts like a prosecutor more than a judge. She questioned me for three hours; it was a real interrogation.\u201d (I wrote to Perry to ask about Melekhin\u2019s case but received only a general reply from the Executive Office for Immigration Review at the Department of Justice.)<\/p>\n

Melekhin presented his case pro se\u2014that is, without a lawyer. He spoke of his past participation in protests and how, after Bobrov posted the image of his Putin poster, police in Perm had searched his family\u2019s apartment. I obtained a transcript of Perry\u2019s oral decision. She considered Melekhin a \u201ccredible witness\u201d and called the evidence that he had managed to gather \u201cplausible, consistent, and detailed.\u201d But she decided that his case did not meet a long-established legal standard, that there was at least a ten-per-cent chance he would face persecution in his country of origin\u2014a benchmark for determining \u201cobjectively reasonable well-founded fear.\u201d Melekhin\u2019s previous activism, Perry said, was \u201cquite limited,\u201d and the \u201cdescription of his participation is vague and lacks specifics.\u201d Melekhin was \u201cnot entitled to relief,\u201d Perry ruled. \u201cThe Respondent is ordered removed to Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLeonid was angry and frustrated,\u201d another Russian asylum seeker at Imperial said. \u201cIn detention, you constantly see people with far less serious cases being granted asylum.\u201d But Melekhin planned to appeal and was confident in his chances. \u201cI tried to offer moral support,\u201d Bobrov told me. He suggested that Melekhin hire a lawyer and launched a fund-raising drive on his Telegram channel to help Melekhin pay for one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the afternoon of August 15, 2024, Leonid Melekhin, a thirty-three-year-old small-business owner from Perm, a Russian city…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[5108,123022,17767,40,332],"class_list":{"0":"post-347112","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-asylum","9":"tag-ice-detention-centers","10":"tag-immigrants","11":"tag-immigration","12":"tag-russia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115034051449924397","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}