Russian woman, 59, wrapped in CHAINS and hurled into ICE detention facility after being arrested at a New York airport, daughter says

A Russian woman was arrested in a New York airport and wrapped up in chains before she was thrown into an ICE detention facility, her daughter claims.

Alevtina Soboleva, 59, was detained at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport on July 20 while returning to her home in California after a vacation in Niagara Falls with her daughter. 

'They did not just put the handcuffs on her. They also put chains on her,' her daughter Daria Soboleva told KRON. 

'She was telling me that was hurting really hard, and she was asked them to [loosen] the chains a bit. They didn't do it.'

Alevtina arrived in the US in October 2021, visiting her daughter in Sunnyvale, California from Moscow on a six-month visa. But before her visa would expire, Ukraine would be invaded by Russia. 

Immigration attorne Regina Jacobson said that Alevtina - who had spoken out against the invasion - then applied for asylum. 

'People cannot go back to their countries because they are seeking asylum and they are in danger. Alevtina can't go to prison if she goes to Russia,' Jacobson said.

Daughter Daria added: 'She's very, very, very responsible, and I'm responsible. So to me, this is a shock. 

'I don't know what happened because we did everything right based on all the procedural things that we were advised [with]  by the government. I don't understand what happened.'

Jacobson said those seeking asylum receive a letter which states that their presence in the US is authorized, 'but nowadays the current administration took the position that they can still take people like that into custody because their local presence in the United States expired.'

A website her daughter created to help her mother said: 'Deportation would send a 59-year-old woman, alone, back to a country at war - one where criticizing that war is now a crime, and where having sought political asylum in the United States is itself viewed by the authorities with hostility.'

Soboleva's health has also been in decline while she has been held at a southern Louisiana detention facility, according to Soboleva and her daughter, Jacobson told the outlet. 

Daria wrote that Soboleva lives with a progressive neurological disorder 'and is ill with an untreated fever.' 

'She was stopped at the Buffalo airport before her flight home to California by three plain-clothes officers who called it "a document check." No documents were requested. She has not been home since,' Daria wrote. 

According to her daughter, Soboleva was detained and moved to Mahoning County Jail in Ohio overnight before she was sent to Louisiana, her third facility in three days. 

On July 23, an officer told Jacobson that Soboleva had already been deported while ICE's locator showed her in custody at Basile. Soboleva was granted her first phone call on July 24 and a video call the following day. 

'She [was] visibly ill - a fever with no medication, no warm clothing against the facility's heavy industrial air condition, and no glasses, which she needs to read forms or use the phone system,' Daria wrote. 

According to her daughter, Soboleva suffers a condition that affects her balance and coordination - which was diagnosed before her detention. 

'Her doctors had project that she could lose the ability to walk, and be in a wheelchair, within a few years... In her calls from detention, she reports that she now feels too unsteady to cross a room without keep a hand on the wall,' the site states. 

Daria said Soboleva also suffers from high cholesterol, is prediabetic and has hearing loss in her left ear which requires a prescribed hearing aid. 

Her daughter and Soboleva are hoping that a judge will release her on an immigration bond pending her removal hearing, KRON reported. 

'I really, really hope that with the help of the community, the place where she lives, all of her friends, there just - there is an army of friends who are staying here and trying to see if there is a way to support her,' Daria said.

'I really hope that we can bring her home.'

Daria said on her website that her mother holds a valid work permit, a California REAL ID and has active medical insurance. Soboleva has also been an ESL student at Mission College in Santa Clara to learn English since 2023 and holds no criminal record. 

Jacobson claimed arrests similar to Soboleva's experience are occurring more and more frequently, and advised any asylum seekers with a pending application to avoid traveling. 

'My mother followed every rule this country gave her. She has spent a week being moved, chained and hidden from court that is supposed to hear her. All we are asking if that the system see her - and send her home,' Daria wrote.  

The Daily Mail has contacted ICE for comment.