The day of Milana Swope’s routine immigration check-in appointment last September, her husband stayed with her in the waiting room until she was called to the back.
Roger Swope, a U.S. citizen, remembers a young man calling his wife’s name for her appointment. A few minutes later, another staff member called his name.
“She told me that, ‘She’s going to be detained. We’re going to send her back to Russia. She has a removal order, she’s going back to Russia,’” he recalled. “I was gobsmacked. I knew this could happen but, you know, you just don’t really know how to react.”
The Swopes’ legal battle to keep Milana in the U.S. comes amidst the Trump administration’s nationwide immigration crackdown. ICE arrests of people with and without criminal records have increased by the thousands since Trump took office in 2025, according to Reuters.
Milana’s journey to the U.S.
It’s been eight months since Milana Swope was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Oklahoma City. Her journey in the U.S., however, began long before.
She came to the U.S. in 2001 on a fiancé’s visa to marry her ex-husband, said Elissa Stiles, the attorney representing her. Milana believed the marriage was about love, but it became a domestic violence and trafficking situation, her attorney said.
She got out of the abusive marriage and received an order of voluntary removal. Then there was a joint custody order, which forced her to choose between leaving the country and leaving her child behind in the U.S.
“So, leaving would have been the same as abandoning a minor child, so she just wasn’t able to do it,” Stiles said.
Milana ended up in immigration court, Stiles said, and has been under ICE supervision since 2004.
She later married Roger Swope, who she called from ICE’s Alexandria Staging Facility in rural central Louisiana during an interview with the Flyer.
The Russian national said she doesn’t understand why the U.S. will not recognize that she’s a victim of trafficking.
“And instead of that, they’re getting ready to deport me. I don’t understand why I am guilty,” Milana said.
She had been going to her ICE check-ins for over two decades now without the agency seeking to remove her, Stiles said.
“ICE doesn’t have to remove somebody just because they have a removal order,” she said. “And that’s been clear in Milana’s case because for over 20 years she’s been reporting to check-ins with ICE even though she has a removal order.”
The Flyer reached out to ICE, DHS and USCIS for a request for comment on Milana’s case. A DHS spokesperson confirmed via email that she was arrested in September, adding she will receive due process.
Finding new ways to fight deportation
Tulsa immigration law firm Rivas & Associates began representing Milana’s case when she was seeking help to regularize her status and obtain permanent residency, Stiles said.
“So we’ve been representing her as she’s been detained and fighting to get her out of detention and back with her family,” Stiles said. “And now we’re desperately trying to stop her deportation.”
Since Milana’s detainment, Stiles has filed a motion to reopen her removal order, which is currently in appeal with the Board of Immigration Appeals. She also filed an unsuccessful habeas corpus petition asking a federal court to review an alleged unlawful detention of an individual.
The T visa, designed for trafficking survivors, is another front in Milania’s fight. Though she claims to have been trafficked in the early 2000s, Milania’s attorneys only filed for the visa recently.
Trafficking looks different than most people imagine, Stiles said, and so many people — and their attorneys — don’t realize they are eligible for the visa. As the application remains pending, Milana is facing deportation back to Russia.
“We’ve been fighting on every front, trying to get her out of detention, stop her deportation and undo her removal order so that she can get lawful status,” Stiles said, noting their efforts date back to October. “I mean, essentially now, come to this point where we’ve pretty much exhausted all of our legal remedies.”
‘Protect me, save me’
Milana is currently detained at ICE’s Alexandria Staging Facility in rural central Louisiana. It is commonly the last stop before somebody is deported, Stiles said.
Stiles said the U.S. wasn’t doing many removals to Russia because it’s in the midst of Russia-Ukraine war that began in 2022. That has recently changed.
“It’s a very tumultuous time and a scary time for anyone to be deported back,” she said. “We’re seeing an increase in removals to Russia and other countries who are in, sort of, similar turmoil.”
Roger Swope said his wife has no immediate family in Russia anymore as most of her close family members there have died in recent years.
He’s holding out hope that the Russian government will drag its feet on their end. Every day, he wears a crucifix given to him by his wife.
“It has some Russian writing on the back of it, and what I understand on the translation, it means, ‘protect me, save me,’” he said.
It’s a symbol, he said, that she’s still with him.
This article was produced as part of a partnership between the Tulsa Flyer and La Semana, a Tulsa-based bilingual Spanish-English newspaper serving Latino communities in Oklahoma.
News decisions at the Tulsa Flyer are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
