How asylum seekers in US custody end up in Russian prisons

On the afternoon of August 15, 2024, Leonid Melekhin, a 33-year-old small business owner from Perm, a Russian city near the Ural Mountains, approached the U.S. border in Carrexico, California. Last winter, he flew to Mexico, leaving behind his wife and their two little children. He spent the next eight months waiting for notice from CBP One, an app launched by the Biden administration in 2023 as an authorized portal to file asylum claims. Now, the app told Melekhin that he has been appointed to show himself to U.S. immigration officials. He wore a backpack and a black baseball cap and took a selfie in front of a sign reading “Entrada USA”.

Melekhin sent the photo to Yerry Bobrov, an activist and political refugee who was also a Mexican mailing telegram from Mexico. These two people have been in contact regularly. Earlier, Melekhin sent another photo to Bobrov, one of which was a yellow poster hanging from a concrete bridge. The text of the poster reads that Putin was “a killer, fascist, usurper.” Meleken said that on his last night in Russia, he went to the Kommunalny Bridge in Perpe and attached the poster to the railing. “I can’t help but resist,” he told Bobrov. He had asked Bobrov to “post it somewhere” because “it would be a pity if no one saw it.”

Bobrov shared a photo of Melekhin crossing the border in the telegram. “I think he might want to strengthen his asylum case, but he really doesn’t want to completely silence Russia,” Bobrov told me. “Is this a strategic move or a soul’s impulse? I don’t know, but I have no reason to doubt his motive.”

Less than a year later, a Perm reporter posted a story about a local court hearing: Melekhin was arrested in Russia and charged with justification for terrorism, a crime that could be sentenced to five years in prison. This is a rare case in such a case, expelled from the United States and facing imprisonment. But little is known about how he finally got there.

From the border, Melekhin was taken to the Imperial Regional Detention Center, the holding center of Calexico, run by a private company called the Management and Training Company. He was placed in a housing unit that included many other asylum seekers, including many Russians, and awaited his hearing with the judge. Meleken thinks he has a pretty strong case: over the years, he has participated in protests and volunteered to attend Alexei NavalnyNow banned political organizations in Russia. “Everyone knows the problem of Russia,” a relative of Melekhin, who is still in Russia, told me. “Corruption is rampant. Fair elections don’t exist,” said Melekhin, a relative. “If he is not satisfied with something, he always stands on his own.”

Even in a medium-sized city on Mexico, Meleken is not a recognizable activist. Bobrov called him “a common, ordinary, family guy who became interested in the fate of his country.” When I arrived at Sergei Ukhov, the former head of the Navalny Field Office in Perm, now living abroad, he didn’t remember Melekhin. But when he searched for his photo archives, he found a photo of Melek during a protest in Perpe in 2017. Natalia Vavilova is another former Cordinist in the Field office. But she also found traces of him: a text exchange in 2018, in which he discussed his plans to volunteer as an independent election monitor during that year’s presidential campaign. “That’s definitely civic activism,” Vavelova said. “No doubt.”

Melekhin was arrested in 2021 during a pro-Navalny protest in Perm. Investigators tried to put pressure on him to testify against others in the Navani political group, but he refused. In 2023, a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, almost all protests were banned, and he went to the center of Perp, holding the “Free to Navani” sign. He was detained almost immediately. At the station, one officer held his hands behind his back while another slammed him in his stomach. Later, police threatened him to be forced to recruit troops to join the Russian army. “He was attracted by the idea of moving to the United States,” said Melek’s relative.

Melekhin started learning English and followed the stories of other Russians, including Bobrov. He decided to travel alone. His youngest child was only one year old at the time. “No one knows how long it takes or the conditions for him to live along the way,” said the relative. The plan is that Melekhin will secure legal status for himself and then find ways to reunite with his family in the United States.

I spoke to many Russians who met Melekhin at the Imperial Detention Center, and none were named for concerns about their safety. “He was in a positive mood,” said one of the citizen journalists from central Russia, who had conducted self-funded investigations of local police and municipal officials and was detained and interrogated several times before he decided to face asylum in the United States and Melekin in the sports field. Both of them were optimistic about their case. “We finally did it,” recalled another asylum seeker. “Of course, they will listen to us and we will be helped in the end. All we have to do is wait.”

Melekhin’s hearing took place in December 2024, during four months of his detention in the empire 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. “She is very friendly, calm, professional, hardworking,” said Raisa Stepanova, an immigration attorney in California, representing several Russian seekers, but not Melekhin. “But her judicial reasoning does not always show an understanding of the actual functioning of Russian police and law enforcement.” A citizen journalist from central Russia also received a ruling from Perry, who said: “She acted more like a prosecutor than a judge. She asked me for three hours; it was a real trial.” (I wrote to Perry to ask about Melekhin’s case, but received only a general reply from the Ministry of Justice immigration review.)

Melekhin brings his case Pro SE– That is, there is no lawyer. He talked about his past involvement in protests and the image of Bobrov posting Putin’s poster, police searched Perm for his family’s apartment. I got a transcript of Perry’s verbal decision. She believes Melekhin is a “reliable witness” and calls for evidence that he managed to collect “reasonable, consistent and detailed”. But she believes that his case does not meet the long-standing legal standards and has at least a 10% chance of facing persecution in his country of origin, which is a “benchmark for determining objective, reasonable and reasonable fear.” Perry said Melekhin’s previous radicalism was “very limited” and “the description of his involvement was vague and lacked specific details”. Perry ruled that Melekhin “is not entitled to relief.” “Article was ordered to hand over to Russia.”

“Leonid was angry and frustrated,” said another asylum seeker in the empire. “In custody, you keep seeing people with nearly the same cases being granted asylum.” But Meleken plans to appeal and is confident in his chances. “I tried to provide ethical support,” Bobrov told me. He suggested Melekhin hire a lawyer and launched a fundraiser on his telegram channel to help Melekhin pay.