With more than 300 student visas revoked, international scholars worry as the government expands reasons for deportation

An increasing number of student deportation threats involve the revocation of visas based on relatively minor offenses like years-old misdemeanors, according to immigration attorneys, or sometimes no reason at all.

Kseniia Petrova’s path from a Harvard laboratory to an immigration cell began with frogs. The Russian national who has been working as a researcher at Harvard Medical School failed to declare “non-hazardous” frog embryos she was carrying with her on her return to the US from France in February, Petrova’s attorney said. Rather than issue a fine, Petrova’s exchange visitor visa was revoked, and she was taken into custody. Revoking Petrova’s visa was “a punishment grossly disproportionate to the situation,” her attorney, Greg Romanovsky, said, calling the error on the customs form “inadvertant.” CNN did not receive a response from the Department of Homeland Security to a request for comment, but the department told ABC News, “Messages found on (Petrova’s) phone revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them.” Petrova now sits in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Louisiana, ICE records show, waiting for a June 9 hearing that could end with her return to Russia, where Petrova’s attorney says she would face immediate arrest over her previous outspoken opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Her detention is not only unnecessary, but unjust,” Romanovsky said.