Federal prosecutors on Tuesday asked a Massachusetts court to drop the smuggling charges against Kseniia Petrova, a Russian-born Harvard researcher accused of bringing undeclared Frog embryos into the United States. Petrova has said she was unfairly targeted after her arrest in February 2025.
A federal judge granted Petrova’s lawyers a broad discovery request in April, which would have required the government to produce evidence about comparable cases. In its request to dismiss the charges, the government said it could not provide that material without disclosing non-public information about U.S. Customs and Border Protection operations and investigative methods.
Prosecutors said the decision was not prompted by Petrova’s allegations of government overreach, which they described as meritless. Assistant U.S. attorney David Holcomb wrote that further disputes and litigation would consume resources better directed toward other federal priorities, and that continuing the prosecution no longer served the public interest.
Petrova’s lawyer, William Fick, said the case should never have been brought and welcomed the government’s move. He said the samples were inert, non-living and non-toxic, and that Petrova was trying to support medical research into aging.
Petrova was detained at Boston’s Logan International Airport in February 2025 after customs officials found undeclared biological samples in her luggage. She had been vacationing in France when her Harvard supervisor asked her to bring samples back from a French laboratory. Her visa was canceled, and she was taken into custody and threatened with deportation before being released on bail four months later.
In a separate immigration case in April, a district court judge in Vermont ruled that Petrova’s visa had been canceled unlawfully, describing the decision as arbitrary and not in accordance with required legal procedures.
Sources: The New York Times Science.