The 59-year-old Russian asylum-seeker from Sunnyvale returned to the Bay Area with her daughter Sunday morning, two days after being released from a federal facility in Louisiana.
Alevtina Soboleva spent nearly a month in U.S. Immigration and Customs detention. She was detained on July 20 at the Buffalo airport as she and her daughter, Daria, prepared to fly home from a trip to Niagara Falls.
Daria said immigration officers stopped her mother before their flight and took her into custody, despite her asylum application still being under review. For days, Daria did not know where her mother was. She said Soboleva was held in a cage and denied water and bathroom access.