Anti-war Russian deported from U.S. immediately confronted by police on return to home country

U.S. authorities have deported Yevgeny Mashinin, a resident of the city of Kovrov in the Vladimir Region, after denying his asylum request — this despite his history of facing persecution for participation in anti-war protests inside Russia.

Mashinin told regional publication Dovod that Russian police confronted him immediately upon his return to his home country.

“The court hearing was held in the detention center. Judge Kevin Terrill [who reviewed the asylum request] has an approval rating of practically zero; it was impossible to win, even a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) didn’t help. The judge even denied asylum to someone with a criminal case [in their home country], telling them, ‘You’ll be jailed, not killed.’ [...] Ultimately, I was deported to Russia (they didn’t return my passport), where police officers immediately came to me, charging me with discrediting [the military] and minor hooliganism, for which I spent two days in jail. My case included four arrests at protests in Russia and an ECHR decision. Now I’ve left Russia again and am in Morocco.”

Mashinin entered the U.S. by crossing the border from Mexico and was subsequently detained in the South Texas ICE Processing Center, where he spent 13 months.

In 2023, the ECHR awarded Mashinin €5,000 in compensation for detentions, fines, and arrests related to protests he attended in Moscow in 2017 and 2021. In 2022, a Moscow court fined him for taking part in an anti-war protest that took place on Mar. 6, 2022. More recently, the Kovrov City Court fined him 35,000 rubles under a wartime censorship law banning the “discreditation” of Russia’s armed forces, citing posts he made on social media as the basis for the charges.

In June 2024, U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order banning asylum claims from individuals who entered the country illegally. The new policy mandates their deportation and imposes a five-year reentry ban.