The last time Ukrainian immigrant Kate Kirilenko saw her husband he was on a bench on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza with chains around his waist, wrists and ankles.

That was June 27, three days after the couple went to the lower Manhattan immigration courthouse for what they expected would be a routine hearing for their joint asylum case. They’d fled Russia in 2023 fearing her husband’s anti-Putin politics and her Ukranian nationality would lead to persecution.

Inside the courtroom, an immigration judge denied a Department of Homeland Security lawyer’s motion to dismiss their case and told them to return to court in March 2026 for another hearing.

They thought they were safe from the Trumps administrations’s aggressive crackdown on immigration. But federal agents lurking outsid

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