A Russian woman, aged 31, faced charges of smuggling biological materials when TSA officers at Boston’s Logan Airport reportedly discovered clawed frog embryos and other embryonic samples in her baggage.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts, Kseniia Petrova, a researcher affiliated with Harvard Medical School, faces charges in a criminal complaint for smuggling goods into the United States. She was arrested on February 16, 2025, after a police canine detected something suspicious in her bags.
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.
Officials assert that Petrova’s text messages reveal her knowledge of needing a permit for transporting the clawed frog embryos and embryonic samples allegedly found in her luggage. In a particular exchange highlighted by authorities, when asked about how she planned to bring the biological material into the United States, Petrova purportedly 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 Instead, my visa was revoked, and I was sent to a detention center in Louisiana,” Petrova wrote.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.
