Charlotte Family Left in Limbo After ICE Detains Father Ahead of Asylum Hearing

April 7 was meant to be a day of anticipation for the Sidorov* family, asylum seekers who fled political persecution in Russia in 2022 and arrived in America through the CBP One program the following year.

With their three school-aged children on spring break from school, parents Polina and Ivan Sidorov planned to take the family to Orlando, Florida, for a trip to Universal Studios. But first, a bit of bureaucracy.

The Sidorovs were scheduled for an annual check-in with ICE that day. They had been through two of these check-ins in as many years, usually just showing their papers and confirming that they were still awaiting word on their asylum case.

This check-in was set to be their last before the family’s final asylum hearing scheduled for December 2026. It came among rising tensions, however.

The family had witnessed Customs and Border Protection’s “Charlotte’s Web” operation in November, becoming increasingly aware of the Trump administration’s aggression toward immigrants — even those who had followed the country’s immigration laws to a T.

“We knew that the officers had a mandate to deport as many people as possible,” said Polina. “That feeling had always been with us, it simply hadn’t manifested so acutely before.”

As they arrived at the ICE offices on Tyvola Centre Drive in south Charlotte on April 7, it quickly became clear that something had changed.

“The document check dragged on far too long,” Polina recalled. “The minutes crawled by, one after another, and the tension mounted. People around us began exchanging glances, but no one understood what was happening.”

Soon agents began pulling people into separate rooms. “First, they called one person into the room. Then a second. Then a third. But none of them returned,” Polina said. “It was terrifying. Then, they called my husband.”

After about 20 minutes of anxious waiting, an officer called Polina to the window and told her dispassionately that Ivan was being detained. He would soon be transported to a detention center in Georgia. There would be no trip to Universal.

“They had been looking forward to that trip for a very long time,” said Polina. “But instead, we walked out of the building without a husband and without a father.”

A family grapples with the dangers that await them in their home country

I visited the Sidorovs’ home in south Charlotte’s McKee Woods neighborhood a couple weeks after Ivan was detained. Polina was there with two of her sons, aged 18 and 11, and her 15-year-old daughter. Her eldest son, 22, was not at home.

Polina, who has been pursuing a degree in accounting while holding down a job since arriving in America, was clearly still shaken up by the situation she found herself in. She told me her English had become strong over the past three years but the trauma of seeing her husband detained had nearly wiped it from her memory.

She spoke in a mix of English and Russian, with her 18-year-old son, a senior at Providence High School, translating when needed. She later sent a written account of her experience, as she felt more confident writing English than speaking it. Her quotes in this article are a mix of our discussion and the written statement.

Despite the stress of her predicament, Polina greeted me with an impressive spread of food that included blini (Russian crepes) and slices of cheese, apples and oranges.

Polina explained her confusion with the decision to detain Ivan.

“We didn’t get any help from the government, so the US government didn’t spend any money,” she said. “None of us ever broke any laws. We don’t have any fights. My youngest children return books to the library on time.”

She chuckled while expressing that last bit of info, a facetious addendum, but there was not much laughing during my visit. At other times, she tearfully told me what would likely await her family if they’re sent back to Russia: jail for her and her husband, the frontlines of the war in Ukraine for her two oldest sons, and an orphanage for her two youngest children.

The family left their home in Moscow after their political views, namely their opposition to the war in Russia, garnered negative attention from government officials there.

“At this moment, our fear has intensified manifold,” she stated. “We are terrified that my husband could be deported to Russia, where he would be arrested and imprisoned on political grounds.”

Polina stays in regular contact with her husband, who is allowed to speak with her over the phone for 45 minutes at a time, as well as the family’s immigration attorney, who has told her that Ivan will get a hearing in two months.

The future remains bleak, however.

“Most likely he will lose,” she told me. “In Georgia right now, judges have almost 100% refusal rate. So they refuse basically almost everyone.”

Their lawyer estimates that, if they appeal, he may be able to delay her husband’s deportation another year or so but there’s not much he can do after that.

“Right now, even in a situation like this we are much safer than in Russia,” Polina told me before tearing up again. “But I really want my husband back with us. My youngest children are very concerned right now and don’t understand what’s going on.”

A rise in deportations for Russian asylum seekers

While some Russian asylum seekers were deported under President Joe Biden following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, an organization called Russian America for Democracy in Russia that assists antiwar Russians with finding legal aid and analyzes ICE data says the deportations have accelerated under Donald Trump.

Queen City Nerve reached out to ICE’s Atlanta field office, which handles communications for the Charlotte office, but hasn’t received a direct response yet at the time of this writing.

An auto response from the agency’s communications department read in part, “[The Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations’] mission is to identify, arrest, and remove aliens who present a danger to national security or are a risk to public safety, as well as those who enter the United States illegally or otherwise undermine the integrity of our immigration laws and our border control efforts.”

We inquired about Ivan’s detainment specifically, asking why it was necessary to detain him while he still waited for his legally appointed asylum hearing in December.

ICE’s auto-response stated, “Please note that we cannot share any details with you about another person without a signed Form G-28, ICE privacy waiver, or in certain circumstances, appropriate verification of an agency relationship with the individual.”

The Sidorovs entered America through the Mexican border by appointment through the CBP One app in March 2023. The CBP One program was launched that year by the Biden administration, allowing migrants in Mexico to book an appointment for an interview at an American port of entry.

After arriving in Mexico in February, it took a full month of tries through the CBP One app before they were finally able to book one for the entire family. The family was allowed into the country following the interview and arrived in Charlotte two days later.

In April 2025, the Trump administration abruptly canceled CBP One in April of last year and sent emails to migrants notifying them that their status had been revoked.

On April 1, 2026, just six days before Ivan was detained, a federal judge in Boston ruled that Trump’s cancellation of CBP One and revocation of legal status for nearly 900,000 migrants was unlawful.

Read more: How ICE Aggression Has Impacted the Restaurant Industry in East Charlotte (2025)

The judge’s ruling applies to all migrants who came into the US using the app from May 16, 2023 to Jan. 19, 2025. The Sidorovs entered through CBP One two months before that, so it’s unclear how the ruling or Trump’s revocation affected their status.

After Ivan’s detainment, the family’s asylum claims were split from one umbrella case, which is how it was deemed when they entered the country, to three separate case: one for Ivan, one for Polina and her younger children, and a third case for their 22-year-old son.

Polina remains terrified that ICE will show up to her home at any time to separate her from her children.

“For us, every day is an attempt to maintain our composure for the sake of our children, an attempt to hold onto the life we ​​have built, which has once again become fragile,” said Polina. “We seek no privileges. We ask for no special treatment. We ask for only one thing: a fair and just review of our case.”

*All names have been changed for fear of retribution.