TIJUANA, Mexico — Semen Bobrovskii, who is Russian, and Daria Sakhniuk, who is Ukrainian, planned to get married this month in Kyiv. But the war between their two countries changed those plans.
On Wednesday, the couple said “I do” in Tijuana, Mexico.
Brobovskii, 29, and Sakhniuk, who turned 27 on her wedding day, married in the Civil Registry office inside the municipal government building of Tijuana — about three miles from the shelter that was their home for about a week.
“We never thought about us getting married in another country, mostly because we were planning it in Ukraine,” Brobovskii said at the end of the ceremony. “We never expected a war to come ... We are really lucky and grateful to be here in this moment, with the people that are surrounding us right now.”
The ceremony was conducted in Spanish and was translated for the bride and groom using a pair of volunteers. The couple’s relatives watched the ceremony from afar through a video call.
“Tijuana is known as the land of opportunities, but also, it’s the land where love always prevails and knows no borders,” said Georgina Bátiz, the official conducting the ceremony.
Volunteers from the Benito Juarez sports complex, which was set up as a shelter to support the growing number of arriving Ukrainians fleeing the war, acted as witnesses to the wedding as did Enrique Lucero, director of the Office for Migrant Care for the city of Tijuana.
“It’s very difficult for me to believe that it all happened this way,” Sakhniuk said with help from a translator.
Once the ceremony was finished, the couple said they planned to return to the border to request protection in the United States. On Friday, Sakhniuk confirmed that they successfully crossed into U.S. soil.
Brobovskii and Sakhniuk met in Kyiv in 2018. Brobovskii moved from Russia to Ukraine because of his work as a consultant for doctors working with hearing aids. Sakhniuk worked in a dental clinic in an administrative position.
The couple, who both lived in Ukraine, left Kyiv on March 26 with the intention of requesting protection in the United States. After a journey that extended for days, they finally arrived two weeks ago at the Tijuana border.
A few days ago, they tried to cross to the United States, but they were not allowed to do so because U.S. officials are only processing for entry Ukrainian citizens who could prove a family tie, the city of Tijuana said in a statement.
Asylum processing at ports of entry closed down completely at the beginning of the pandemic and has yet to reopen to most people who have fled their countries to the border. A policy put in place by the Trump administration says that U.S. officials can keep out anyone trying to enter without documents giving them permission to be in the United States, including asylum-seekers, and that they can expel those who try to cross anyway without screening them for protection needs.
Ukrainians have in recent weeks been given an exception to that policy, and their entries to the United States have been fast-tracked. They generally receive one-year permits to be in the United States and are immediately released on the north side of the border rather than spending time in custody.
For now Russian citizens have no way to enter the United States with permission. Those who enter anyway often end up in immigration detention if they are not traveling with children.
Because of the differences in how their nationalities are being treated at the border, the couple approached Tijuana’s Office for Migrant Care for help, and their case was analyzed by the Civil Registry. The couple shared pertinent documents to prove that they’d had a relationship since 2018, Mexican officials said.
“After closely reviewing the foreigners’ documents, the official from the Civil Registry (Bátiz) determined that a legal path exists to carry out the wedding,” the officials said in a statement.
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