A 59-year-old Sunnyvale woman who was trying to fly home from a Niagara Falls vacation is now in ICE custody in Louisiana, while her family presses for answers about how she was detained and transported across the country. Her daughter says the ordeal has included shackling, poor conditions and days without contact.
Alevtina Soboleva was approached by plainclothes officers on July 20 at Buffalo Niagara International Airport as she prepared to return to the Bay Area, according to NBC Bay Area. The officers reportedly described the encounter as a document check and did not identify themselves as ICE agents, according to her daughter, Daria Soboleva; ICE records later showed that Alevtina was in custody at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile.
Soboleva moved to the United States from Russia in October 2021 to help her daughter settle into a new job at Sunnyvale-based Cerebras Systems. The family decided returning to Russia was unsafe after the war in Ukraine began, and Soboleva filed an asylum application in April 2022 that remains pending; her daughter says she has no criminal record…