By Svetlana Sinotova, transcribed from the GTL / GettingOut app by her husband, James Szumowski
On June 15th, 2026, my wife, Svetlana Sinotova, a Russian national and legal alien of the United States, was unlawfully detained by the Department of Homeland Security. The following day, she was placed into ICE custody. Sveta is now imprisoned in the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, the very same facility in which Rumeysa Ozturk was detained. The following account is Sveta’s experience during her time as an unlawful prisoner of ICE and a testimony to blatant dehumanization and injustice.
Monday, June 15th, 2026, turned out to be not only the worst day of the year for me, but also one of the worst of my life. My friend had invited me to visit Hillary Clinton’s speech in Manhattan on East 92nd Street. When I came to the building, on the stairs, I was stopped by a group of people who told me that I was being detained. I got very scared and short of breath, and when I asked why, they refused to explain anything to me about why I was being detained. I felt a rush of dizziness prior to having another epileptic seizure. I begged them to call 911, but they refused, so I called myself.
When the ambulance arrived, they put cuffs around my wrists, as well as my ankles, and they told me I was being arrested by ICE. Three men were in the ambulance with me, and they were treating me very rudely. They snatched my phone right from my hands and did not even allow me to use it to call a lawyer or friends. They treated me like a slave from the very start.
When I arrived at the hospital, people gaped at me as if I was a criminal, bound in chains. My left breast hurt terribly. I had just had surgery for a malignant neoplasm of the breast back in April that I was still recovering from. I was lying on a bed in Mount Sinai when one of the men in uniform came and put a handcuff on the bed rail as if I was about to escape. I felt devastated. I was shaking relentlessly, and the pus continued to leak from my breast.
After several hours of waiting, which seemed like an eternity, they obtained another X-ray of my breast. They rejected my request to be allowed to undergo an MRI of my brain, despite me having just suffered an epileptic seizure. Everywhere I went throughout the hospital, the guys in uniform were following me, even to the bathroom. They were laughing at me, actually laughing at me, and discussing my health condition sarcastically.
The following morning, they led me out of the emergency room and shoved me into a black SUV. Shortly after, we arrived at 26 Federal Plaza. Just hours earlier, I had been free. Now, I was being herded into that building like an animal.
I was thrown alone into a cell without windows. They confiscated my phone and all my clothes and gave me a black uniform. They did not answer any of my questions. I did not even know what time it was. I knocked on the cell walls repeatedly to ask to call my lawyer or my friends, but they did not let me. The toilet in the cell was filthy and stinking, but nobody cared. They gave me some beans and told me that was the meal I would get.
Finally, they called me to write down some numbers. But they still did not let me use the phone! The ICE officer shouted at me and told me that I was a criminal and an invader of the country, and I deserved such a rude attitude. I told them that I have epilepsy and need pills, but they shouted at me that I would wait, wait, and wait, and then locked me again in the cell.
I told them that I needed care for my breast. To my outrage, they told me that I made the cut in my breast myself and that I would need to show a document proving my diagnosis. There I was, again locked in the cell. They yelled at me for asking too many questions.
I could not sleep because of the pain in my breast, and the stone bench was extremely cold. They gave me a thin mattress and a thin blanket. It made no difference at all, and I started to knock on the cell door window repeatedly, asking for another blanket.
After a while, a woman with an angry face opened the door to the cell and threw a “silver foil” blanket at me, saying that I was always complaining and unbearable. I asked again if I could make a phone call, but they told me they were “extremely busy” and I needed to shut up.
I was hungry, extremely cold, shivering without taking my anti-seizure medicine, and had no doctor to help drain the pus from my breast. By now, I was extremely concerned about developing either sepsis or a staph infection. The bench was narrow, and no matter how hard I tried, I could not sleep. It was one of the most horrible nights of my life.
Suddenly, the door opened. I asked the woman in uniform what time it was, and she told me it was 5 a.m. She gave me a plastic box, the so-called “breakfast,” with a piece of bread and some cereal. I asked again to please be allowed to make a call, but she told me that nobody had come to the office yet and I would need to continue to wait.
After some time, they called me out. I was hoping to finally be allowed to make a call, but no. They told me I was to be transported. They put chains on my ankles again and handcuffs around my wrists, the same as all the other women, like we were the most severe criminals.
I asked where we were going, yet, the same as before, they did not answer anything, only telling me that I was annoying. They put me in a van with other women, and then they added men. I was in a panic. Nobody would answer where we were going.
Only one guy among the detainees spoke English, not Spanish, and he told us that we were being transported to Louisiana. He told us that he had already spent a month in detention in Newark, and they did not want to show him an “easy” life. They had decided to transport him again. He had spent several years in the U.S. He paid taxes, worked as a mechanic, and had no criminal record. He got stopped while on his way to work one day.
The drivers of the car, meanwhile, told us, in a very rude manner, to shut up while eating pizza. We were so hungry, but they did not care and continued eating very loudly, crunching their teeth as if to mock and taunt us.
When we arrived at the airfield, we were greeted by the most horrible view. It looked like a slavery or trafficking flight. People were pulled out of vans in chains on their ankles and handcuffs on their arms, and then other officers came and put their “shift” ankle chains and handcuffs on them.
Even if you got lucky and they put the chains on your feet loosely at first, you would not be happy for long. A new shift officer would come and fasten the chains so tightly that when you walked, blood would be left on your ankles from the constriction. And that was exactly my case.
We were sitting in the van for a while and saw people entering the plane. It was a horrible view. They all were wearing chains on their feet, and they could hardly climb up the stairs of the plane.
Then it was my turn. I had to walk up the stairs of the plane, and every step brought me a lot of pain, but nobody cared. When I had hardly entered the plane, a nurse with an angry, arrogant face told me that I should be patient and the chain was loose enough. I started to shiver and feel very dizzy, like I was about to pass out.
I told her I could not fly and needed hospitalization. She told me I was making stuff up and went back to her colleagues, and they laughed at me all together. How could a nurse, somebody meant to protect and preserve human lives, including people sick like myself, be capable of such cruelty? She told me that I was just hysterical.
When she came up to me, I noticed the logo “GEO” on her shirt. Later, I was told that GEO Group is a private company that contracts its prisons out for use by the U.S. federal government, and this gigantic Airbus, with six seats per row, also belonged to the company.
Soon enough, the plane was full but had not taken off yet. I wanted to go to the restroom. There was a line with other girls to the bathroom. I had to stand and wait and, of course, was still bound in chains.
Finally, my turn came. I could hardly stand on my feet. The officer did me a “favor.” She opened ONE handcuff for me to use the bathroom. When I entered the bathroom, I locked the door, only for her to curse at me from outside. She threw open the locked door from the outside, shouting that it was forbidden to lock the door.
I came back to my seat, hardly able to walk from those ankle chains constricting my feet. Already, my ankles were bleeding, and I had started to develop deep purple bruises.
When I sat back down, I heard the people up front talking: “We have an emergency, he had managed to hide his phone somewhere, we cannot fly like this, it is a violation.”
A guy in black glasses and a cap, who was probably the main manager there because everyone was reporting to him, said, “Fuck it, we should fly no matter what.”
From their conversation, I understood that one of the detained men had somehow managed to hide his phone, probably in some part of his body because we all had been searched before. The poor man most likely wanted to connect with his lawyer and stop this unlawful arrest and the flight against our will and without taking into consideration our health conditions to the “black hole of Louisiana.”
At his command, the plane started to move. The girl next to me opened the window curtain to see the view, but she was immediately shouted at. It seemed like even attempting to open a window curtain was a “big violation.”
During the flight, one of the “employees” passionately shared his impressions after a holiday to Florida and exchanged recommendations of the best strip clubs to visit there. They probably thought everyone was ignorant and could not understand English. I was utterly revolted.
When we landed, we shuffled out, one by one, in our ankle chains and handcuffs. A man in a flight uniform at the foot of the stairs, likely the pilot, saw the miserable expression on my face and, in a moment of sympathy, told me, “Good luck.”
Quickly, I asked him where we were, and he answered, “Alexandria, Louisiana.”
We were then put into another van, this time separated from the men. There were already around ten girls behind bars, which separated the spaces inside the van. The other girls and I entered the van, which was freezing cold inside. The air conditioner was turned all the way up. Perhaps they wanted us to feel like meat in a freezer.
It was an endless road, which was exacerbated by the fact that we did not know the time, of course, and the driver did not want to tell us the time when we attempted to knock through the bars.
Finally, we arrived at our destination among endless green fields. We could hardly see anything through one window on the side. It was fully covered by a blurred cover, but there was one small hole in it.
Then, the driver, an extremely obese Black woman, maliciously and sarcastically said to us: “Welcome to paradise, ladies.”
When we came out, we saw how they were throwing our white bags, with our names and belongings inside. We entered that miserable building.
Currently in Solitary Confinement
On Sunday, August 23rd, around 9 p.m., after standing in a big line to receive my medicine at the window, Briviact for seizures, Fluoxetine, and Lamictal, Nurse Boudreaux asked me to come inside the medical area.
She asked me to take the medicine and wanted to swab my mouth with a stick to check that I swallowed it. She accused me of keeping my medicine and selling it to other girls. She said that this medicine is a narcotic, but it is not! A spray, Nayzilam, for seizures is considered a narcotic spray, which they do not give to me here.
I repeated to her several times that I don’t sell my medicine, as my husband puts money on my account, and my medicine is not a narcotic medicine. She told me that I probably vomit the medicine after taking it into my tea and spread it around.
So, she called Officers Mrs. Green, Mrs. Senegal, and Mrs. Brown. They put me in the isolation cell, as they said, for an “unknown period of time” to “check cameras” and “make sure I don’t vomit pills to give to other girls.”
It was torture. I am claustrophobic. I was scared and depressed in this isolation cell. There was not even toilet paper, just a thin, narrow mattress and no blanket or pillows, and no pads, even though I was having my period.
I felt like an animal in a cage. I started to scream and knock on the door, asking them to bring me toilet paper, water, a tablet, or a phone to call!
Only after a while did another officer come and bring me a little bit of toilet paper, not even a roll!
After about 40 minutes, she released me from the cell without any comments. After that, I became scared to go and get my medicine because I have a panic attack and fear being locked in the isolation cell and accused of distributing the medicine!
“Fuck Nurse Rhonde Boudreaux“
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