France grants safe haven to anti-Kremlin couple detained by ICE
France
has granted safe haven to an anti-Kremlin Russian activist couple
detained by ICE in the United States, but his wife was nowhere to be
found after he landed in Paris on Monday. After France issued the couple
humanitarian visas to avoid them being deported to Russia, Alexei
Ishimov, 31, arrived in Paris from Seattle on Monday morning, AFP
correspondents saw.
His
29-year-old wife Nadezhda, a former volunteer for the late opposition
leader Alexei Navalny, was expected to arrive on a separate flight from
Miami, also on Monday morning.
But she did not show up at the Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport as planned.
The
couple were both swept up in US President Donald Trump's immigration
crackdown, and had been held by the country's ICE agency that is leading
a crackdown on immigration.
Olga
Prokopieva, head of the Paris-based association Russie-Libertes, which
has been assisting the young couple, said Nadezhda was not allowed on
the flight because she had a temporary travel document called a
laissez-passer instead of a passport.
Russie-Libertes and the Russian Antiwar Committee hope that Nadezhda will be allowed to travel to France soon.
The couple left Russia in 2022 as the Kremlin ramped up a crackdown on opponents following the invasion of Ukraine.
The
couple eventually flew to Mexico and entered the United States in 2024.
They were detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and
sent to different detention centres as part of Trump's immigration
crackdown.
Alexei
had spent nine months in detention in California and later in the state
of Washington. In January 2025, he was released with an ankle
bracelet.
- 'More than a hundred countries' -
Nadezhda has been kept at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center for around 21 months.
To avoid deportation to Russia, Alexei had contacted numerous countries.
"Starting
from May 2025, I wrote letters to more than a hundred countries asking
for help, and essentially no one responded except France," he said.
He said that French diplomats were "constantly in touch."
They
"worked very closely with ICE representatives, contacted me regularly,
and did everything possible to help us obtain a lawful path to safety
and reunification," he said.
"It is hard for me to find the words to express the gratitude we feel," he added.
Tens
of thousands of Russians have applied for political asylum in the
United States since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Many
detainees have been subjected to arbitrary detention and not given a
fair chance to defend themselves in court.
About
1,000 Russians, many of them asylum seekers, have been deported back to
Russia from the United States since 2022. Some deportees were arrested
on arrival.
Dmitry
Valuev, head of the Russian America for Democracy in Russia (RADR)
group which has followed the couple's case, said that a US judge had
ordered that Nadezhda be deported to Russia. But activists hope she'll
be allowed to fly to France.
Alexei said he would feel at ease only when he sees his wife.
"We
are very tired: it has been almost two years of constant stress and
pain, and separation is especially hard when you have no idea when it
will end."
