If you’re in the mood for another immigration-control horror story, an article in yesterday’s New York Times provides it. The title of the article tells what it’s about: “Antiwar Activists Who Flee Russia Find Detention, Not Freedom, in the U.S.”
The article details how Russian citizens who have fled Russia in opposition to Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine, and then made their way to the United States, are being treated, under America’s immigration-control system, as horse dung.
Consider the case of a young married couple named Mariia Shemiatina and Boris Shevchuk. They were practicing physicians in Russia. On Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they began posting messages on social media opposing the invasion. The 29-year-old Shemiatina wrote on Instagram, “I call on Russians to see the truth, to not believe the lies of the Russian media.” Her posts were repeatedly deleted by Russian authorities.
Advised that Russian authorities were coming to get them, they escaped and made their way to Mexico and then crossed into the United States seeking refugee status under America’s byzantine system of immigration controls. That’s when U.S. immigration officials began treating them like horse dung.
They were handcuffed and had their feet shackled, just like inmates at the Pentagon’s and CIA’s torture and prison camp at Guantanamo Bay. They were then flown to remote detention camps in rural Louisiana, where they were separated. They were not permitted to see each other for the next six months.
Hey, why not? They are Russians, right? And haven’t we been taught to hate all Russians? They are all alike, right? And who’s to say that Putin hasn’t sent them here to serve as a secret advance force to pave the way for the Russian invasion and conquest of the United States — after those evil Russkies finish conquering Ukraine, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and England, of course.
This extreme anti-Russia animus is nothing new. Back in the Kennedy administration, the Pentagon recommended that Kennedy initiate a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, similar to the Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor. Even though an estimated 70 million Americans would still be killed in retaliatory nuclear strikes, there would still be tens of millions of Americans still surviving. The important thing was that all Russians, who were all considered to be communists, would be exterminated. To his everlasting credit, JFK rejected the Pentagon plan, remarking indignantly, “And we call ourselves the human race.”
Unfortunately, but certainly not surprisingly, Shemiatina and Shevchuk are not the only Russian refugees being treated like horse dung by U.S. immigration officials. According to the Times article, “Lawyers who work regularly with migrants say Russian asylum seekers appear to have been detained at relatively high rates in recent months — sometimes with bonds set in excess of $30,000. Some Russians have remained incarcerated for months under conditions they describe as extremely harsh.”
25-year-old Russian dissident Ivan Sokolovski has been incarcerated for seven months. He said, “It would have been more humane to be shot dead at the border than to be held in prison so long.” He recently lost his case for refugee status and is now threatened with deportation to Russia, where he will likely be executed for treason.
Perhaps the most biting commentary was by Boris Shevchuk, the husband of Mariia Shemiatina. He stated “I came to realize that I had left Russia for a place that was just like Russia.”
What better indictment of America’s socialist system of immigration controls than that?
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