When Ukrainian immigrant Kate Kirilenko last saw her husband, he was chained around his ankles, wrists, and waist on a bench on the tenth floor of 26 Federal Plaza.
Three days prior, on June 27, the couple had arrived at the immigration tribunal in downtown Manhattan for what they had anticipated would be a standard hearing in their combined asylum petition. Fearing persecution due to her Ukrainian identity and her husband’s anti-Putin views, they left Russia in 2023.
An immigration judge in the courtroom rejected a Department of Homeland Security attorney’s request to have their case dismissed and instructed them to appear in court again in March 2026.
They believed that the harsh immigration crackdown by the Trump administration would not affect them. Nevertheless, she and her husband, Alex Uzkii, were captured by federal investigators who were hiding outside the courtroom on the 12th floor.
“We were grabbed as soon as we left the courtroom,” Kirilenko, 39, stated through a translator in Russian. They pushed us against the wall and led us into the elevator. They attempted to take our documents away with force while my husband was holding them. He made an effort to keep them out. As a result, they shackled him there after pushing him against the wall and striking him in the back.
Kirilenko claimed that as they exited the elevator and entered what she thought was the tenth floor, she was handcuffed. The two questioned the reason for their detention on several occasions. The agents did not respond, with a number of them wearing masks over their faces.
Horror. No ideas. She remembered that it was simply fear.
The life Kirlenko started in New York with her husband is now in ruins. She has no idea whether or when he will return home. She worries about what will happen when she goes back to the courthouse next month, despite the fact that she was freed from custody for medical reasons.
What they will do tomorrow is unknown to me. I have no idea what the future holds for me. I can be detained in September. She said, “I don’t know what will happen with my husband.” I’m hardly sleeping at all. Every hour, I get up. There are a lot of dreams and thoughts running through my mind.
One of the lawyers on the couple’s team, Michael Musa-Obregon, stated that they are trying to liberate Uzkii so he can go back to New York and fight his case from outside of a prison. He added that there’s a chance Kirilenko might be arrested when she appears in court again.
According to Musa-Obregon, people are showing up to their appointments on time since it is their duty and obligation. There’s a problem with the notion of pursuing worthy cases like [Kirilenko’s] and then having them detained in the process, you know. You cannot face consequences for attending your court date. And that’s basically what’s taking place.
Questions concerning the case were not answered by the Department of Homeland Security.
Surprise arrest
Kirilenko claimed that since they had complied with the regulations, they didn’t anticipate being detained, even though they had read about ICE holding immigrants at city courthouses. They used the Biden administration’s CBP One app to cross the southern border, and they applied for asylum within a year of their arrival.
Since we were never late, we never missed anything, and everything in our case was correct and lawful, we simply didn’t imagine that this would have an impact on us, she added. Simply put, we were unaware that people were being held without cause.
Before being released by ICE for a major abdominal surgery that she had previously booked, Kirilenko was detained for over six days. Uzkii, 46, is still being held in a prison facility far from his home in Livingston, Texas.
The fact that we were held is unfair. Nothing went wrong on our end. She said, “We came here to seek protection from our country.” Nothing went wrong on our end. My hubby needs to leave. He is not deserving of being taken into custody or arrested. We don’t commit crimes.
According to Kirilenko, the holding cell at 26 Federal Plaza was a chilly cement room where women slept on benches on the floor, only warmed by reflecting blankets. According to her, there was only a waist-high partition obstructing other people’s view of the toilet because the bathroom was connected to the room.
According to her, ICE fed the approximately 16 women detained in her room three times on the first day but just twice on subsequent days. Three or four types of hot soup, cheese-topped bagels, protein bars, and cookies were on the menu.
In certain cases, we would have to repeatedly request water. She said, “I don’t know why you had to ask so many times.”
Kirilenko claimed that the agents would not allow her to take the medication that was recommended to prevent the growth of the cyst that would eventually be surgically removed from her ovaries.
In the meantime, Uzkii was mysteriously taken twice from 26 Federal Plaza to a facility in upstate New York. Every time for the transport, Kirilenko saw through a glass panel in the door as agents handcuffed him in a reception area.
He was only visible to me via the glass. We attempted to read lips and use our fingers to communicate. She said that it didn’t truly work.
[Alex] made an effort to uplift me. He appeared really upset when I sobbed. When they last saw each other on June 27, Kirilenko recalled, “I tried to talk, but it was hard because it’s very noisy inside the room and he couldn’t hear me.”
Before being transferred to the IAH Polk Adult Detention Center in Texas, he was first flown across the nation to a detention center in Louisiana.
Before Kirilenko’s major surgery the following day, ICE officers forced her to download a tracking program to her phone on June 29.
Kirilenko was recuperating at a friend’s house in Queens after a successful surgery. However, her sleep was abruptly interrupted when she received a message from ICE at 7:22 a.m. the next day, requesting that she appear in person at court by 10 a.m. the same day.
Kirilenko was barely able to move from her bed due to five incisions on her abdomen. After submitting a note from her surgeon saying recovery would take four to six weeks, ICE told her she could check in by submitting a photo of herself to the tracking app every week until further notice.
Being tracked has left Kirilenko wary of leaving her friend s place, and she won t even walk around the block for fresh air, her friend said.
Every morning Kirilenko looks forward to her ten-minute phone call with Uzkii.
His main goal is to make me feel better. He doesn’t moan a lot. He just tries to keep up my spirits, she said. He says that nothing much goes on where he is. He said even people who signed the paperwork to self-deport, they re at this facility waiting for two months to be deported.
A lonely July 4
Still thousands of miles apart from one another, Independence Day came and went, and Kirilenko thought of last year, when they went to the Macy s 4th of July fireworks show on the Hudson River.
It was a huge crowd. It was cool. In my city the fireworks are not so long and so varied. Different shapes. [Alex] also liked it, she said. We were thinking to go this year too.
Uzkii, who was born in Russia, opposed the war against Ukraine and supported Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Kirilenko, who was born in Ukraine and moved to Ryazan, Russia in 2010 to be with Uzkii, feared the worst living on the enemy s turf.
The situation became more difficult. The laws became stricter. People were persecuted for supporting Navalny and obviously if they knew you were Ukrainian, she said. It was becoming clear that things were about to get worse and worse. At that point it was literally a threat to our lives to continue to stay there. So we had to leave.
Though it was never their dream to move to New York, Kirilenko said her husband was instantly charmed by the city.
When we first arrived in New York my husband said, Can you imagine we are in New York? We saw the Empire State Building, not just in pictures. In real life. He was very excited about it, she said.
Kirilenko said they had no life in Russia anymore, and had began building a new life in the city, living in Midwood, Brooklyn, learning English and exploring the city.
I m not here just to make money, like some people. I want to live here, to integrate and be a part of it, she said, adding that she is considering going to college to become a pharmacist or an accountant.
Uzkii, who holds a degree in radio technology, told Kirilenko his experience being detained has left him hoping to volunteer for an organization that helps other immigrants and to possibly become a lawyer in the future.
We were interested in doing a drive through the country to see it. It s so big. See the desert, go somewhere where there s ocean and it s warmer. See the mountains, the animals, the plants. Everything is different. Half of it doesn t exist back in Russia, she said. We were very excited to do that, and now we sort of feel like there s no hope.
For now, they live every day in uncertainty, with no clarity on where their asylum case stands.
Kirilenko shared a message from Uzkii in Texas:
It s not fair that they grab people like that, yank them out of their lives, leaving a bunch of obligations on the outside. I want to be released, go back to New York, where I am a resident, and use my right to defend a case in immigration court without extra pressure.
