Galina Kaplunova, 26, an illustrator and anti-Putin activist, was detained and separated from her child and mother at the US border last August.
In the summer of 2024, Kaplunova’s husband, a Kremlin supporter, had threatened to take her child away and report her to the police for her political activism, Kaplunova said. A native of St Petersburg, she had been detained multiple times at protests and had volunteered in opposition leaders’ campaign offices. Two days after her husband made the threat, Kaplunova, her four-year-old son and her mother fled to the US.
At the US border with Mexico, Ice agents separated Kaplunova from her son, she said. He was placed in foster care, while she and her mother were sent to different detention centers in separate states.
After being separated, her son was placed with a Mexican American family, she said. He didn’t speak English, so communicated with them through Google Translate.
“I fled Russia so they wouldn’t take my child or jail me. But the US did,” she said.
About two months after being detained and separated, Kaplunova was released and reunited with her son, she said. It was a miracle, she said.
Now Kaplunova and her son now live in California. Her mother is still detained. Her son is afraid of being abandoned. Whenever she tries to discuss his time in foster care, he simply says he doesn’t remember it.
“It’s as if he erased that part of his life so he wouldn’t have to remember it,” she said.
He learned some English in foster care, but refuses to speak it with his mother.
“Maybe he associates English with something bad, something negative,” she
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