Liudmyla Karnes is a Topeka IT specialist and Ukrainian-born naturalized U.S. citizen who loved this country long before she came here 17 years ago.

When Russia first invaded Ukraine, Karnes naturally feared for the safety of her sister and three young nieces just a few miles from the fighting — and reports of systematic rapes by soldiers — in Dnipro.

So she bought them plane tickets, met them in Tijuana, Mexico, waited four days in line with them at the border, along with thousands of other Ukrainians, and accompanied them in through the port of entry in San Ysidro, California. Everyone was flying a Ukrainian flag in those days, and it was no problem bringing her loved ones to Kansas, either.

“They were welcomed with open arms,” says Karnes, not only by our government, which has granted and extended their humanitarian parole several times, most recently through October of next year, but by their new neighbors in Topeka. “Everyone did something nice for them.” Since then, her sister has married a Ukrainian-born American serving in the U.S. military, and has applied for a green card.

Karnes’ younger brother Oleksii Sechyn and his common-law wife Svitlana Zhovanik, who both have college degrees and work with computers, too, did not come from Kyiv then, though they could have. That’s because Sechyn, who himself has a serious autoimmune condition, was caring for his mother, who died of cancer last year.

When Sechyn, who is 35, and Zhovanik, 32, finally did leave, they stayed first in Poland, then in France. In January, they flew to Mexico, where Karnes met them just a few days before Donald Trump was inaugurated.

Yes, the timing was terrible, but when caring for a dying parent, were they supposed to hurry? Back in Karnes’ home country, “every night they’re still bombing,” she says. “My sister and I are Oleksii’s only family in the world. I have a house and a job and wanted them to be away from those horrors. I wanted him to have the wonderful opportunities I have. I wanted him to visit the beautiful places we have in the States. I wanted them to have a beautiful life together.” Of course she did.

‘The handcuffs were really tight’

So at the San Luis border crossing in Arizona on Jan. 16, Karnes was with Sechyn and Zhovanik when they told border agents that they were seeking humanitarian parole — just as her sister and nieces had done three years earlier. But this time, the border agents said —understatement alert — that things had changed. Their request was denied.

Then they asked for asylum as refugees. And in response, according to Karnes, they were all handcuffed and searched. “It was scary, and the handcuffs were really tight.” This was particularly painful for her because one of her arms is shorter than the other, and she was handcuffed behind her back.

After several hours, they released her, but said that if her brother and his wife were seeking asylum, then they would have to be detained while their case was decided. It would only be a couple of weeks max though, before they were let go, the officers at the border assured them.

That was four months ago, and they have been in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities ever since — he in the Folkston ICE Processing Center in Georgia, and she in the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona. They both failed their “credible fear” interviews that would have gotten them a fuller hearing, and their appeals of those denials failed, too.

Why anyone living in Kyiv right now would not have credible fear doesn’t make sense to Karnes: “Those missiles are hitting residential areas and hospitals; what do you mean your fear is denied?”

Her brother and his wife have no arrest record anywhere, according to the paperwork their immigration attorney prepared for ICE. In fact, they are the kind of professionals that the president says he wants to come here. Karnes has a home all ready for them, or did have. “My main desire is for them to come and live here with me.”

But after the last four terrible months in custody, where, according to Sechyn’s sister, he’s fed less all the time and paid $2 for washing floors for four hours a day, they’ve given up on seeking asylum here. “They’re trying to break him and make him want to leave.” And they have.

All Sechyn and Zhovanik want now is to be sent to some third, neutral country that’s accepting Ukrainian refugees without a visa, as most countries are.

In a statement to me sent through his sister, Sechyn said, “We came here to ask for help and refuge, and instead they detained us and are holding us against our will for such a long time. We would like them to let us leave, or at least deport us to a third neutral country.”

His stressed-out, but very brave and loyal sister, said: “They’ve made people sorry for asking for refuge in the middle of the war. How humane is that?”

‘They never got that far’

On paper, Sechyn’s case was closed on Feb. 14. If he were from, say, Mexico, he and his wife would have been deported back to his home country long ago. But under international law, it would be illegal to send them back to a war zone. And even if we were willing to overlook that nicety, it would be hard to do that since the airspace over Ukraine is closed.

Their New York-based lawyer, Inessa Faulkner, told me she thinks if she could get somebody at ICE to actually look at the requests she keeps filing and refiling, they’d realize that this is not another case of someone asking to be released into the United States, as so many others are. “They are flooded with those, and I don’t think they’re even reading this one,” she told me. “I encounter just this wall.” And what she hears back is — nothing at all.

Faulkner said that their expedited order of removal to Ukraine was issued on the day of their entry to the U.S. “But the task now is, is it fair that my client was not given an alternative to discuss?” In fact, since he was never heard before an actual judge, there would have been no forum for him to raise the fact that he could and would be glad to go just about anywhere else. Since he and his wife didn’t pass their “credible fear” interviews, “they never got that far.”

In March, someone at ICE advised Faulkner to send a letter by mail if she was serious that her clients could pay for their own way out; that letter was sent on March 26. But again, no response.

“My client is very ill, needs to get out and wants to pay for it” — for going anywhere except back into a war.

And I want someone, anyone, at ICE to read her many petitions, see that they have merit, and see that even for those for whom humanitarian concerns are footnotes, there’s no reason we should keep paying to incarcerate these non-criminals who want to get on the next plane out of here at their own expense.

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