A Russian woman, 31, faces charges of smuggling biological material as it was discovered by TSA agents at Boston’s Logan Airport that she had clawed frog embryos and embryonic samples in her bags.
Kseniia Petrova, who works as a researcher at Harvard Medical School, has been accused in a criminal complaint of illegally importing goods into the U.S., as stated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts. Petrova was apprehended on Feb. 16, 2025, after a sniffer dog alerted authorities to her luggage.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said on Wednesday that Petrova allegedly denied having the biological material at first but later admitted to carrying it.
According to prosecutors, text messages from Petrova indicate that she was aware of the need for a permit to bring in the clawed frog embryos and embryonic samples discovered in her possession. In one of the messages referenced by the authorities, Petrova was questioned about her plan to bring the biological material into the country, to which she allegedly replied, “No plan yet. I won’t be able to swallow them.”
While she admitted in the op-ed to not filling out a customs form regarding the frog embryos in her luggage, she believed it would result in a fine or warning, not an arrest.
“At Logan International Airport, I did not complete a customs declaration for frog embryos (for use in our lab’s research) in my luggage. I’m told this would normally result in a warning or a fine. Instead, my visa was revoked, and I was sent to a detention center in Louisiana,” Petrova wrote.
In her op-ed, Petrova claimed that colleagues said the lab—home to the world’s only NoRI (short for Normalized Raman Imaging) microscope—”ground to a halt” after her detention.
“Without me there to help, the lab has been unable to analyze the image data that the microscope generates,” Petrova wrote.
Kseniia Petrova, a bioinformatician at the Kirschner Lab, was bringing back frog embryos at the request of a professor at a French lab Harvard is collaborating with. (Facebook)
She also claimed that several of her colleagues are afraid of having their visa status revoked and being detained, as “many” are “foreign scientists.”
On Wednesday, a federal judge grilled government attorneys on their grounds for canceling Petrova’s visa and detaining her, the Times reported. The judge reportedly set a bail hearing for Petrova later this month.
Romanovsky told the NYT that he believes the government filed the criminal charge against his client “to make Kseniia look like a criminal to justify their efforts to deport her.” He also said that he and his client were “blindsided by the unsealing of a meritless criminal complaint,” which came after the bail hearing was set.
