Trump officials prepare to deport some Ukrainians despite conscription fears

Deportations to Ukraine have declined in recent years. An adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky said, “We’ll find good use for them.”

By Maria Sacchetti, Marianne LeVine, Siobhán O'Grady and John Hudson, The Washington Post, November 14, 2025 at 5:00 a.m

Ukrainian emergency personnel work Wednesday at the scene of a drone attack in Kharkiv. (Diego Fedele/Getty Images)

The Trump administration is preparing to deport some Ukrainians with final orders of removal back to their war-ravaged homeland as the government seeks to ramp up deportations and Ukraine moves to tighten its relationship with Washington. 

The Justice Department said in a court filing Wednesday that the government has plans to deport Roman Surovtsev, 41, to Ukraine as early as Monday. His attorneys said it appears that Immigration and Customs Enforcement may be attempting to remove “a significant number” of Ukrainian nationals and that other detainees are being told they will be removed “via military flights to Ukraine or Poland on Monday.”

Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, said the embassy is aware of “approximately 80 Ukrainian nationals” who have final orders of removal “due to violations of U.S. law.” She said U.S. authorities were working on the logistical arrangements to carry out removals, “taking into account the absence of direct international air service to Ukraine.”

“It should be noted that deportation is a widely used legal mechanism provided for by the immigration laws of most countries around the world,” Stefanishyna said. “It is a routine procedure applied to all foreign nationals and stateless persons who violate the terms of their stay in the United States, regardless of their nationality.”

Ukraine has a history of not fully cooperating with U.S. efforts to remove certain immigrants, such as Surovtsev, who was born under the Soviet Union and whose citizenship has been unclear for decades. But that may be changing as Ukraine strains to fend off Russian attacks, recruit soldiers and retain support from Washington. 

“The U.S. can deport as many as they want,” said an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a policy matter. “We’ll find good use for them.”

Surovtsev’s lawyers, Eric Lee and Chris Godshall-Bennett, said they are worried that Ukrainians and other former citizens of the Soviet Union are at risk of being removed without being given a chance to protest their deportations.

“In at least some cases, it appears that detainees are not being given the right to demonstrate a fear of removal before being deported. This is unlawful,” they said in a statement. “Ukraine is a war zone, is currently under martial law, and it is likely that any deportees will be forcibly drafted into the army and sent to the front where they face a high likelihood of death.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that “due to operational security, ICE does not confirm future removal operations,” but that Surovtsev had “received full due process” and that “every single detainee receives due process and has their claims heard.” 

The Washington Post spoke to the families of at least two other detainees who were told they would be sent back to Ukraine as early as Monday.

Andrey Bernik said in an interview that ICE officers recently informed him that he would be flying to Poland on a charter plane and then handed over to Ukrainian authorities, who would take him to Ukraine. Bernik said he came to the U.S. at age 13 in 1990 as a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union. He said that at one point he had a green card and that he had tried to get a Ukrainian passport but never received one.

Bernik was convicted of second-degree murder more than a decade ago. According to California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office, Bernik and his family members were confronting a business associate, and as Bernik left, he fired a shot from his car and “inadvertently struck and killed his own relative.” Newsom commuted his sentence in 2022, clearing the way for him to apply earlier for parole, saying that although Bernik had committed a serious crime, he had “demonstrated a commitment to his self-improvement and rehabilitation.”

“I deserve to get deported, but not in the war zone — not where the war is right now,” Bernik said. “How can you deport me somewhere where the war is?”

The number of Ukrainians deported back to their homeland has been declining as bombs have turned cities into rubble and more than 5 million people have escaped to other countries. If 80 individuals are removed, it would mark the highest number in recent years. In fiscal 2024, there were 53 Ukrainians removed from the U.S., according to ICE data.

Under international treaties, officials are not supposed to send people to countries where they could be persecuted or tortured. Even hardened criminals are supposed to be protected from torture. But advocates say the Trump administration is pushing the boundaries of those principles by trying to send people with criminal records to countries such as South Sudan, which has been on the brink of civil war, and now Ukraine.

Surovtsev, who was born before Ukraine became an independent country in 1991, came to the U.S. legally with his family at age 4, settled in California and became a permanent resident. As a boy, he helped his mother clean houses by day and law offices at night. He began stealing small toys as a child, his lawyers said in court records, because he didn’t want other children to know he was poor.

At 18, he committed a burglary. At 19, he and his friends carried out an armed “carjacking” of a motorcycle. He served more than 11 years in a California state prison.

An immigration judge ordered him deported in 2014. At that time, officials in Ukraine said they could not confirm that he was a citizen. Russia, which has a history of refusing removals, also declined to take him. ICE was then forced to release Surovtsev into the U.S., because the Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that detainees cannot be held indefinitely.

Over the next decade, Surovtsev became a born-again Christian, married a U.S. citizen, had two children — now ages 5 and 3 — and started a painting company in the Dallas area. He checked in with ICE as required. In August, officers rearrested him as part of President Donald Trump’s campaign to mass-deport undocumented immigrants, including those who had been released in the past.

He filed a federal lawsuit that month in Texas seeking release, saying he was unlikely to be deported to Ukraine. He also persuaded state prosecutors in California to get a court to vacate his carjacking-related convictions in September in hopes of regaining legal status, saying he pleaded guilty without realizing he could be deported. The Supreme Court has said that such plea deals are unconstitutional. He has asked an immigration court to reopen his case.

On Oct. 31, U.S. District Judge James Hendrix, a Trump appointee in the Northern District of Texas, rejected Surovtsev’s petition for release, saying that his deportation order is “indisputably valid” and that he could be deported to Russia or a third country if Ukraine refused to take him. Alternate-country removals have become more common under Trump, he noted.

Hendrix also noted that Ukraine stands on a “more cooperative footing with the United States today.” American officials, he wrote, have invested billions of dollars in Ukraine, pledged to help it rebuild from the war and negotiated a share of the country’s mineral resources.

“Unsurprisingly, these efforts have been accompanied by American overtures to remove individuals to Ukraine,” Hendrix wrote.

U.S. District Judge Ada Brown, also a Trump appointee, blocked Surovtsev’s removal earlier this week through Jan. 13 but reversed her decision Thursday.

Surovtsev’s lawyers had argued that he merited a fresh interview with an asylum officer to determine whether he had a reasonable fear of being deported to Ukraine since so much has changed in the past decade.

Surovtsev was born in the Soviet city of Zhdanov, now known as Mariupol, in southeastern Ukraine. Russian forces destroyed much of the port city early in 2022, then seized control of it. Many residents were killed, and those who did not escape now live under Russian occupation. The city is impossible to access from Ukrainian-controlled territory on the other side of the front line.

ICE officers awakened Surovtsev at 5:30 a.m. Thursday in the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, his lawyers said, and told him he had to pack his belongings. He said he again expressed fear of being deported to Ukraine or a third country, but officers refused to grant him a “reasonable fear interview,” court records show. He was put on a bus but then returned to the detention facility about 90 minutes later, his lawyers said.

“He has repeatedly informed his ICE custodians that he fears being removed to Ukraine, a country that is presently at war and under invasion,” his lawyers wrote in a court filing. “Not only will Mr. Surovtsev face a high likelihood of being killed by the Russian military, but as a foreigner who speaks Russian and not Ukrainian, he faces a high likelihood of persecution from Ukrainian authorities as well.”

Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 are required to register with military recruitment offices. Men older than 22 are not allowed to leave the country except under extenuating circumstances. Those with three or more children, caring for a disabled relative or deemed medically unfit to serve can be exempted from the draft, which begins at age 25. Universities and certain companies contributing to Ukraine’s war effort or the country’s economy can request that some male students or employees also be excluded from the mobilization.

Ukrainian is the official language of Ukraine, although many Ukrainians speak Russian. The war has spurred a growing movement for native Russian speakers to switch to Ukrainian. English is also increasingly common in Ukraine, and a 2024 law established it as the country’s official language for international communication.