by Marie Cohen

The last time Evgeny and Evgenia saw their eight-year-old son Maksim was on May 15. That’s the day that the couple refused to board a commercial flight taking them back to Russia, from which they had fled fearing persecution for their opposition to Valdimir Putin. On August 24, Maksim will turn nine years old in foster care. He has not seen his parents since May 15 and has given up hope for a reunion. Maksim’s family is not unique. The New York Times found a total of nine cases in which parents have been separated from their children after refusing to comply with deportation orders in this new version of the family separation policy that generated such a strong backlash in the first Trump Presidency.

As reported by Hamed Aleaziz in the New York Times and its podcast, The Daily, Evgeny and Evgenia, who prefer not to have their last name revealed, fled Russia because of their political activism. As supporters of Putin’s murdered enemy Alexei Navalny, they felt that they were at risk of losing their freedom, their livelihood or even their lives if they remained in Russia. They fled to Mexico, with the hope of getting an appointment to apply for asylum in the US through a cellphone app created by the Biden Administration to enable asylum-seekers to schedule an appointment from outside the country. But Trump shut down that program when he took office. Seeing no other option, the family went to a port of entry on the southern border and explained that they were there to seek asylum. But asylum applications had been shut down completely at the southern border, and the family was detained in Border Patrol custody. After two weeks, they were taken to JFK airport to be deported.

At the airport, ICE officials told Maksim’s parents that they would be separated from their son if they did not board the flight to Russia. But Evgeny was trying to prevent a longer separation in Russia since he expected to be detained there. With many tears on all sides, Evgeny and Evgenia were taken to detention and Maksim was taken to a shelter for unaccompanied immigrant children. It was May 15, 2025.

In the first Trump administration, thousands of families were separated at the border as a way to deter people from entering the country illegally. Parents were arrested and criminally charged for illegally entering the country and their children were taken away. This policy created a massive outcry worldwide and Trump ended it in 2018. Today, border crossings have slowed to a trickle and the new administration is focused on deporting those who have already crossed. Migrants from many countries can be shackled, cuffed, and loaded onto chartered flights. But for those who came from countries like Russia that do not accept deportation flights from the US, the government must use commercial flights to deport unwanted migrants. And commercial airlines do not accept passengers in restraints or who make a scene. Hence the choice offered to Maksim’s parents.

As Aleaziz puts it for the Times, “the new cases suggest that the administration has decided to use family separation as a tool, at least in some instances, to persuade families to leave and to create a powerful deterrent for those who might come to the United States illegally.” He found nine families who have refused deportation and been separated. But he does not know how many families have faced this choice, including those who have agreed to return to the countries from which they came. A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security told him that there is no family separation policy and that “these families had the right and the ability to depart the country as a family and willfully choose to not comply.”

Evgeny and Evgeniia have not given in–a fact which lends credence to their fear of persecution in Russia. Since Maksim was taken from them, they have passed the rigorous screening for the validity of their asylum claim. Now the government cannot deport them to Russia but can send them to a third country if one can be found. Maksim has been transferred to foster care. His conversations with his parents are heartbreaking; At first he was counting the days that he has been apart from his parents but has now stopped. At this point, he has given up hope that he will see his parents again. Maksim will turn nine on August 24 and it looks like he will not be with his parents on that special day.

My regular readers know that, unlike some people who want to abolish foster care, I support the separation of children from their parents when there is abuse or neglect that is so severe that the child cannot be protected without removal. But perverting these practices in order to deter asylum-seekers is state-committed child abuse. Allowing Maksim to spend his ninth birthday in foster care as a lesson to families with valid asylum claims not to enter the United States is heartless beyond belief. Can a groundswell of opposition be generated and end this family’s ordeal and that of others in a similar situation? I certainly hope so.