Immigrant trucker returns to war-torn Ukraine rather than risk ICE encounter: ‘I preferred going back home’

Karina Krainova said she didn’t want to risk ‘being treated the way other immigrants are in those detention centers’. Composite: Courtesy Karina Krainova, Bloomberg via Getty Images

Karina Krainova, who worked as a trucker in the US after fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where she is from, rushed to the closest motor vehicle’s office last fall, just days after the US transportation department tightened commercial driver’s license requirements for immigrant drivers like her.

She was already afraid of being deported back to Ukraine as the war rages on. She had entered the United States legally in 2024 under a Biden administration program that granted hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians a safe haven.