San Diego Ukrainian woman detained at green card interview is released but still faces removal

SAN DIEGO – Sitting next to her husband in their Rancho Peñasquitos home, Ukrainian mother Viktoriia Bulavina recalled Friday the tense moments she experienced being taken into immigration custody during a green card interview last week.

On Dec. 4, she was handcuffed in front of her husband, who is a U.S. citizen, and taken away by federal immigration agents at the end of her marriage-based green card interview at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services building in downtown San Diego.

She initially thought she would be released within hours while they verified her status. But she ended up spending five days in custody.

Bulavina was released from the Otay Mesa Detention Center on Tuesday.

“She cried, and she kind of trembled,” said her husband, Victor Korol, who was translating for her in an interview Friday, describing the moment she learned of her release. “She couldn’t believe it’s possible because some detainees are there for months.”

Her attorney, Caroline Matthews, with Pathway to Citizenship San Diego – a local nonprofit that provides legal services to immigrant families – said that the fight is not over, as Bulavina is still facing removal. She has a notice to appear in court later this month.

Matthews said that she filed a motion to terminate the proceedings and will seek to resume Bulavina’s green card case.

Assistant Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed Friday in a statement that Bulavina has been placed in immigration proceedings. “All of her claims will be heard by a judge,” she said. “She will receive full due process.”

Bulavina, 46, first arrived in the United States in September 2022 under a humanitarian parole program for Ukrainians displaced by the war, established during the Biden administration. Through the United for Ukraine program, she reunited with her daughter, who had arrived in San Diego earlier that year with a group of Ukrainian national gymnasts as part of a training program.

Bulavina later applied for Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which was approved in June 2024 and set to expire in April 2025.

In January, DHS announced an 18-month extension for Ukrainians who reregistered for TPS, extending it through October 2026. Bulavina applied to renew her TPS and work authorization in January, before her status was due to expire, within the time frame required by USCIS.

Bulavina and Korol got married in November 2024, and in late March, she and her husband petitioned for a green card for her.

Some immigration attorneys and advocates have reported that, since mid-November, several people have been detained during their green card appointments in San Diego.

Bulavina said the agents told her that she was detained because her status had expired. She explained that she had filed for renewal on time and that her case was still pending. She was taken into custody and transferred to an immigration detention facility in the nearby Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building.

“The pending part is not the applicant’s fault,” said Matthews. “These unnecessary delays are kind of being created in this administrative bureaucracy.”

On Tuesday, the day she was released, Bulavina received notification that her TPS application had been approved, the couple and their attorney said.

Matthews said that Bulavina was charged with an overstay, but she insisted that this was not the case.

Bulavina said she remained about three days in the immigration detention facility downtown before being transferred to the Otay Mesa Detention Center.

She said that she was held with 12 other women in the downtown detention facility. She was provided with a yoga mat and a thermal blanket for sleeping on the floor. There was an open toilet in the room, and when someone needed to use it, the women would stand up and form a wall to provide some privacy.

She said she was grateful to the other women, one from Thailand and others from Mexico, because they helped each other. She recalled that on her third day, she was crying. The other women surrounded her, prayed and sang to make her feel better.

Bulavina said that she wants to fight her case and return to her normal life. She had dreamed of opening a window blind installation business in San Diego.