Igor Babkin, 33, a Russian art teacher who fled Russia and was kidnapped by cartels while crossing through Mexico, poses for a portrait on Tues, Oct. 29, 2024, in Central Texas. ICE arrested him in San Antonio at a check-in appointment for his asylum case on Feb. 3. He is currently being held at a privately operated ICE facility in Pearsall.Christopher Lee / Staff PhotograBefore Igor Babkin went to his immigration check-in early last month, the Russian asylum seeker and Wimberley-based artist warned clients he might have to cancel upcoming commissions for his paintings – because he might get thrown into detention.Not that he saw much reason to worry.Article continues below this adBabkin hadn’t crossed the border illegally to make his asylum claim. And his check-in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a year ago, his first since President Donald Trump returned to office promising a harsh immigration crackdown, had gone off without a hitch, said Babkin’s wife, Liza Kalinina.So Babkin was just warning his clients out of an abundance of caution, she said.San Antonio was experiencing a cold snap when the couple and Lavender, their nine-month-old daughter, arrived for his appointment at a nondescript office building near San Antonio International Airport on Feb. 3. Kalinina stayed with the baby in the warm car while Babkin stood outside the building.At past check-ins, he waited for an ICE official to come outside to collect his documents. The agent would then go back into the office building and return with the papers a short time later. Babkin, 33, could then go on his way.Article continues below this adThis time, Kalinina said she watched other immigrants hand over their papers, get them back and then leave – but not her husband. He was repeatedly passed over. After about two hours, he was directed to go inside. Uneasy, Kalinina called his immigration attorney.She was on the phone with a legal assistant when an ICE agent called with a message from her husband.“They said he wants to give me something,” Kalinina said. “And that’s when I realized that he’s being taken away.”Article continues below this adBabkin fled Russia in 2023, saying he’d been beaten and persecuted for his opposition to the invasion of Ukraine. He came to the U.S. through Mexico, after security forces in that country repeatedly detained and harassed him and a traveling companion. His journey was recounted in a San Antonio Express-News story about criminal organizations exploiting an app that the Biden administration used to restrict asylum claims at the border. In 2024, Babkin settled in a cartel-controlled migrant camp on the bridge connecting Progreso in the Rio Grande Valley to Nuevo Progreso, Mexico. After two months there, he was allowed to enter the U.S. under what immigration officials call parole, which allows immigrants into the U.S. for a specific purpose. Some people are paroled for humanitarian reasons, such as allowing them into the country for a medical procedure. Babkin got parole to pursue his asylum claim.Babkin spent 28 days in custody at an immigration detention center in Port Isabel, where he passed his initial asylum screening before ICE determined he was eligible for release.Eventually he received a work permit and was told to check in with ICE regularly. He had a preliminary immigration court date scheduled for December of this year.Article continues below this adThe meeting last month was supposed to be one of those routine check-ins.After answering the ICE officer’s call, Kalinina scooped up her daughter and went into the office building, where agency officials told her that Babkin was being detained.“I asked them, ‘Why him? Is it something that he did?’” she said. “They said, ‘No, no, it’s not something that he did. It’s just the new policy.’”An ICE spokesperson didn’t answer questions about why Babkin was arrested, but said he benefited from “the Biden administration’s catastrophic catch and release policies.”Article continues below this ad'He's following the procedure'Babkin was detained amid the Trump White House’s historic effort to deport people who are in the country without authorization while also discouraging legal immigration. One of Trump’s targets has been people who claimed asylum during the Biden administration and are waiting to adjudicate their claims – like Babkin.A record number of asylum seekers showed up at the border during President Joe Biden’s single term, many crossing the Rio Grande illegally before making their claims, which federal asylum laws permit. With its resources strained, the Department of Homeland Security created a number of alternate ways to claim asylum, most of which involved some sort of parole. Some were praised by advocates because they let people apply for entry to the U.S. without making the dangerous trek through Mexico. Others, such as the app CBP One, were criticized for limiting access to asylum.Stephen O’Connor, an Austin immigration attorney who has filed a lawsuit seeking Babkin’s release, noted that Babkin didn’t cross the border illegally, instead waiting his turn on the international bridge in Nuevo Progreso.Article continues below this ad“He's following the procedure that was laid out, and this arrest is purely punitive,” O’Connor said.“He's not a flight risk, he's not a danger,” the attorney added. “So what is the purpose of this detention?”When Trump came into office last year, he terminated most of the Biden-era parole programs. Starting in the fall, activists and immigration lawyers noticed that asylum seekers in the U.S. on parole were being detained at court appearances and ICE check-ins, said Robyn Barnard, the senior director for refugee advocacy at the New York-based advocacy group Human Rights First.“The purpose of detention is meant to be ensuring people's appearance” in court, Barnard said. “These are people who overwhelmingly are appearing for their court hearings. They're following all the rules.”Article continues below this adSince his arrest on Feb. 3, Babkin has been held at the South Texas ICE Processing Center, a privately operated detention center in Pearsall, which is about 50 miles southwest of San Antonio.A recent decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appellate court for Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, will likely make it harder for Babkin to get released anytime soon.In the ruling, rendered days after Babkin was detained, a three-judge panel found that “applicants for admission” – a term that covers a wide range of immigrants, including asylum seekers like Babkin – can’t ask an immigration judge to set bail for their release. However, ICE can decide on its own to release Babkin. Article continues below this adIn a lawsuit filed about a week after Babkin’s detention, O’Connor argued that ICE should have left his parole in place and permitted him to continue living with Kalinina and Lavender until his asylum case was complete. He argues that when a new president makes sweeping policy changes, the people affected have a right to due process. ICE can’t have a blanket policy of detaining asylum seekers who have been in the U.S. for years, O’Connor wrote, and immigration officials should be making decisions about detention on a case-by-case basis. He’s asking a federal judge in San Antonio to order Babkin freed.'We don't know what to do'Kalinina, who’s also from Russia, is still living with their daughter in the Wimberley area, where she has some history. She attended Wimberley High School as an exchange student 12 years ago. Kalinina said she fell in love with the artsy Hill Country community, particularly what she described as a culture of service and volunteering. She and Babkin settled there after fleeing Russia. Article continues below this adThe community embraced the couple. Babkin, an artist who’d taught children in Russia, started selling his paintings at local fairs. That led to commissions to paint portraits, including on-the-spot paintings at weddings.Wimberley resident Kathie Carlson said when she met Babkin at an art event, she tried out some of the Russian phrases she remembered from long-ago school lessons. He seemed to understand, but when he answered her in his language, she realized she was out of her depth. But despite their limited ability to communicate, she and Babkin became friends. When she helped him get a gig painting portraits at a wedding, he gave her a watercolor painting of her cats.“Two of them have since passed, so it’s so special now to have a portrait of them,” Carlson said.Article continues below this adBefore Babkin’s detention, friends and supporters of him and Kalinina helped the family by paying his entry fees for art competitions. They also hosted a baby shower. Since his detention, they’ve started an online fundraising campaign to pay his attorney’s fees, and they help Kalinina with errands and childcare.“People are just up in arms about what happened,” Carlson said. “We don’t know what to do.”'He feels like he's dead'Kalinina said she talks to Babkin on the phone, at eight cents per minute, about three times a day. He has access to an electronic tablet, and they text occasionally at 35 cents per text. She said she’d tried to send him pictures of their daughter, but they don’t go through for some reason. Article continues below this adShe said Babkin has described waves of pinkeye and colds sweeping through the 1,900-bed facility. He lives in a dorm of 100 people.Kalinina said Babkin had difficulty breathing for a week and was given only acetaminophen. And he didn’t have access to his prescribed medications for mental health and gastrointestinal problems. When other detainees asked the center’s staff to send him to the medical unit, she said, they were threatened with solitary confinement. Babkin eventually spent several days in the medical ward, where he was given steroids, antibiotics and a breathing treatment, Kalinina said. “He says that he feels like he has died – like he’s dead, and the world is moving on without him,” Kalinina said.Article continues below this adICE said Babkin didn’t disclose his need for medication until he’d been in detention for a week. The agency spokesperson said Babkin began receiving his medication on Feb. 12 and was moved to the medical unit on Feb. 17 after being diagnosed with a cold. He was returned to his dorm on Feb. 19.“Colds are common during this time of year,” the spokesperson said in an email. “ICE has not received information indicating any unusual activity related to colds or pink eye, and the facility has not issued any alerts outside the expected range.“Reports that ICE threatened detainees for raising concerns about Babkin’s illness are absolutely false.”While he is receiving medication for post-traumatic stress disorder, it’s not the same medication he usually takes, which was prescribed while he was first detained at Port Isabel, Kalinina said. Article continues below this adHe began receiving medication for his gastrointestinal condition on Wednesday, she said.Detention is such a miserable experience that even people with strong asylum cases often give up and accept deportation rather than stay in limbo, separated from their families, said Mackenzie Heinrichs, an associate professor of law at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law. Heinrichs called the Trump administration’s policy of detaining asylum seekers “a deterrent strategy to make America very inhospitable to immigrants.”“I think they want to deter asylum seekers from coming to the U.S., but also to incentivize self-deportation,” she said.Article continues below this adKalinina said she feels like she did when Babkin was in Mexico, being arbitrarily detained and forcibly relocated by security forces and threatened by cartels while she frantically called lawyers and officials from the U.S.“We’ve been oppressed in Russia, and we came here for protection, learning all the impossible rules and regulations of immigration along the way,” she said. “Waiting as long as was necessary, waiting until it took a huge toll on Igor’s health, until it became unbearable to wait any longer. Being OK with being detained for the first time. Abiding to all the rules. Pay taxes. And it doesn’t matter.”March 9, 2026ContributorJason Buch is a freelance journalist based in Texas who covers border and immigration issues, politics, and state government policy. He can be reached at jbuchreporter@gmail.com.