‘They might be in America, but they’re not free’ A Russian preacher tells the story of how his son ended up in U.S. immigration detention

In August 2023, Russian investigators detained Pentecostal bishop Albert Ratkin as a witness in an investigation into alleged “falsehoods” about the Russian army. Though he wasn’t charged in connection with the case, Ratkin’s children urged him to flee the country. Instead, he convinced his eldest son — an opposition activist — to leave Russia and seek asylum in the United States. David-Viktor Ratkin managed to cross the Mexico–U.S. border in May 2024, and has been in an immigration detention center ever since. Now, he’s one of thousands of detained Russian nationals trying to navigate the complex bureaucracy and opaque policies of U.S. immigration courts. At the request of the independent journalists’ cooperative Bereg, Albert Ratkin shared a firsthand account of his family’s story. Here’s what he said about their life before the war and what happened to David-Viktor after he left Russia for the United States.

Best known for sharing his sermons on YouTube, Pentecostal bishop Albert Ratkin has led the Word of Life Church in Kaluga, a city in western Russia, since 1991. According to the pastor, his congregation was always actively involved in the community, helping feed the hungry, rehabilitate people with addictions, and raise money for a local orphanage. But their church also faced constant pressure from the authorities. “The FSB has been monitoring me for a long time,” Ratkin told Bereg. “[My] children grew up amid all of this: arrests, persecution, and criminal cases.”

These childhood experiences gave Ratkin’s eldest son, David-Viktor, an “overwhelming sense of justice,” his father said. “He was always trying to defend or prove something to everyone. He always had his own point of view.” 

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At 14, David-Viktor’s parents sent him to the Christian Life Academy in Louisiana. But he returned to Russia right after graduation. “He got into a local university but he still decided to return to Russia, because he was young and stupid — and pro-Putin,” Ratkin recalled. “He ate up the propaganda about ‘Russia rising from its knees,’ but when he came back, enrolled in RUDN University to study political science, and saw what was happening with his own eyes, his views changed diametrically right away.” 

David-Viktor became actively involved in protest rallies, met anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny, and became one of the leaders of Protest Moscow — an opposition movement that grew out of mass anti-government demonstrations in 2017. “He was arrested repeatedly, in 2020, 2021, and 2022,” Ratkin said. “At first, I was worried, of course. But then [I realized] that everything is in God’s hands anyway. You can’t change anything.” 

According to Ratkin, agents from Russia’s Center E — the anti-extremism arm of the Interior Ministry — “latched on” to his son. “They sought him out at rallies, talked to him, arrested him, but didn’t officially charge him with anything,” he said. 

While visiting Kaluga in 2021, David-Viktor was jailed for 10 days for attending a rally in support of Alexey Navalny with his family. According to Ratkin, his son “already knew where this was all heading,” but he decided to stay in Russia, hoping to obtain his Master’s degree from “Shaninka,” the Moscow School for the Social and Economic Sciences. 

“In the end, it still didn’t work out,” the preacher explained. “Shaninka rector [Sergey Zuyev] was put in pre-trial detention, and the political science faculty was destroyed.” 

‘Go far away from Russia’

David-Viktor was vacationing with friends in Turkey when Moscow began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Rather than return to Russia, he went to Kyrgyzstan, where he started working with human rights organizations. 

When he went home for a short visit in August 2023, however, David-Viktor found his father embroiled in an investigation — the authorities had detained Ratkin Sr. as a witness in a case against the chairman of the Russian Union of Evangelical Christian-Baptists, who was suspected of spreading “falsehoods” about the army.   

“On August 8, special forces burst into our church, knocking out the windows,” Ratkin told Bereg. “FSB agents from Moscow searched our church for six hours and then went to my apartment. At the Investigative Committee office, they put my wife and me in separate rooms and began pressuring us. They threatened my wife, saying they’d harm our children, to coerce her into writing a statement against me. She didn’t do it [and,] in the end, they couldn’t find anything on me.” 

After the interrogation, all of Ratkin’s children, including David-Viktor, urged him to leave the country. “And then who will stay here? Who will speak the truth here? What, should I abandon the people completely?” he replied. 

“There must be a voice of honor — I don’t know what else to call it,” Ratkin told Bereg. “Besides, the courts have opened yet another door for preaching the Gospel,” he added. “Now [officials] in the Justice Ministry, Center-E agents, and Roskomnadzor all watch my sermons.” 

Though he insisted on staying in Kaluga, Ratkin urged David-Viktor to go “far away from Russia and from Kyrgyzstan,” fearing his son would be extradited. “He flew to Mexico, in order to cross the border into the United States,” Ratkin explained. “Ten families from our church got out that way when the mobilization began.”

David-Viktor spent eight months in Tijuana, waiting for the opportunity to request asylum at a U.S. border checkpoint. But after crossing into the United States on May 12, 2024, he ended up in an immigration detention center in California. “He had a sponsor, work arrangements, and political grounds [for seeking asylum]. His first two [immigration] court hearings were successful, and the final hearing was scheduled for September. And literally two days beforehand, David-Viktor was sent from California to another detention center in Tacoma, Washington,” Ratkin said. 

According to the pastor, his son was transferred along with 30 other Russian nationals, forcing them to restart court proceedings in a new place with a new judge. “David-Viktor tried to resist, [saying,] ‘I have a court date in two days, I’m not going anywhere!’ But the officers [at the detention center] said that if he didn’t go ‘nicely’ they’d inject him with something so he’d ‘become a vegetable and wake up in a new place,’” Ratkin said. 

Meanwhile, in Russia, the authorities declared Ratkin Sr. a “foreign agent.” 

‘An unofficial order from Washington’

David-Viktor’s new asylum case went before an immigration court in October 2024. But his father fears that he could be transferred to another state before his next hearing, which is scheduled for March 2025. “The officers [at the detention center] openly say that there’s ‘an unofficial order from Washington not to let the Russians out,’” Ratkin told Bereg. 

“Many of [the Russian citizens] in immigration detention centers are Jehovah’s Witnesses, LGBTQ people, sick people, pregnant women, all sorts. These are our youth, our children, who fled from here — so why are they being detained there?” he asked rhetorically. “They might be in America, but they’re not free. And the conditions there are no picnic. It’s still a prison.”

David-Viktor’s time in detention has left him “exhausted” and in poor health, Ratkin said: “He already has signs of diabetes, his eyesight deteriorated significantly, and his teeth hurt (pulling them out is the only thing they can do there, and they’ve already promised to do it).” 

Be that as it may, his son has already decided that once he gets out, he needs to help free other Russian citizens trapped in U.S. immigration detention centers. 

“The last time he completely broke down [and said,] ‘Dad, I’m done. I’m ready to give up and get deported.’ I told him, ‘You chose your path yourself, so why complain? Have hope! You’ve only been in jail for five or six months, whereas here they would’ve given you 10 to 15 years,’” Ratkin recalled. 

“Our lives are in God’s hands,” he concluded. “We’ll go through whatever we have to go through.”