A 30-year-old Harvard researcher from Russia has been held for more than a month at a private detention center in Louisiana where federal immigration officers are sending a growing number of international students with lives here suddenly in jeopardy.

Kseniia Petrova's attorney said her previous arrest in Russia and social media activity "will almost certainly ensure a nice, hefty jail sentence for her" if she is deported back.

A Russian scientist who works at Harvard University’s Medical School has spent the last six weeks in immigration detention and is facing possible deportation after undeclared frog embryo samples, which she was bringing back to her lab from France,