Alexander Bolokhoev, a 41-year-old native of Russia’s republic of Buryatia, was rounded up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Sept. 23 in Oklahoma when completing a routine delivery in his box truck. “He wasn’t even allowed to take his phone, wallet or any other personal belongings out of the car…It was left standing there unlocked,” said Bolokhoev’s friend Marina Khankhalaeva, who learned of his detention from an odd Instagram message he managed to send. An ethnic Buryat, Bolokhoev said he came to the U.S. in search of refuge from racial discrimination that members of his Mongolic ethnic group face despite being Russian citizens born on their ancestral lands. But as the U.S. institutes a sweeping immigration crackdown, he has become one of the many Indigenous Russians who now find themselves detained and facing deportation — a process that for many bears traces of the discriminatory system they fled. Hundreds of members of Russia’s numerous Indigenous communities and ethnic minority groups have come to the U.S.
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