The United States deported 50 people to Ukraine this week, a Ukrainian border official said Tuesday, in what appears to be the largest single deportation from the U.S. to Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion. The flight touched down near the Polish border in the early hours of Monday.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s public tracker, ICE has removed 105 Ukrainians since the invasion began, including 13 deportations in the last quarter of 2024. Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., Olha Stefanishyna, said the Trump administration initially planned to send 80 people on the flight; at least one person on the original list could not be confirmed as a Ukrainian citizen, and officials did not immediately explain why only 50 were ultimately deported.
Immigration lawyers warn that people deported to Ukraine could face conscription: Ukrainian men ages roughly 25 to 60 are eligible for the draft, and some women and younger people have volunteered for service. U.S. law permits deportations, including to countries where a person was not born, but both domestic and international law prohibit returning people to places where they would face violence, persecution or torture.
The current U.S. administration has sought deportation agreements with countries that have poor human-rights records or active conflicts — including South Sudan, Libya, Eswatini, Rwanda and El Salvador — as part of an effort to increase removals. Lawyers and media reports say some people sent to other countries have since been detained or remain unable to leave; for example, six of eight men deported to South Sudan over the summer reportedly remain there.
Andrii Demchenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s State Border Service, told reporters that border guards had registered the arrivals “in accordance with the rules established by law,” and that Ukraine accepts people it recognizes as its citizens. Ambassador Stefanishyna described deportation as “a widely used legal mechanism” under the immigration laws of most countries, saying it is a routine procedure for foreign nationals and stateless persons who violate terms of stay.
Humanitarian and legal concerns have been raised because many on the flight had long ties to the United States. Eric Lee, an immigration lawyer with a client on the plane, said the group included people who have lived in the U.S. since childhood and some with U.S. citizen spouses and children. Several deportees reportedly do not speak Ukrainian; others were born in the Soviet Union before Ukraine existed as an independent state and may not hold Ukrainian citizenship.
One man, Roman Surovtsev, was slated to be on the flight but was not deported after an immigration court stayed his removal hours before departure and reopened his case. Surovtsev, who lived in Dallas with a U.S. citizen wife and two children, came to the U.S. as a refugee and later lost his green card as a teenager after pleading guilty to a California carjacking. ICE had earlier struggled to secure travel documents for him; at one point the deportation paperwork was in Ukrainian, a language he does not speak.
Surovtsev’s lawyers say they vacated his conviction and moved to reinstate his green card, but he remained in detention. U.S. District Judge Ada Brown initially blocked his removal through Jan. 13, then reversed that decision days later, a move that surprised his attorneys. Lee said Surovtsev “has also not been given the opportunity to express his fear of being deported to an active war zone.”
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Surovtsev “received full due process and was ordered removed by an immigration judge on November 4, 2014 — over a decade ago,” and added, “Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, if you break the law, you will face the consequences. Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”