"Road to Freedom" is a Telegram channel I started in August 2023. Not a blog in the traditional sense — more like a dispatch log from the middle of something you can't stop once it starts. Our asylum journey. Russia → Georgia → Mexico → US border → detention → Portland.

What follows is a compressed version of what went down. The real thing is still live:

→ t.me/rtf_blog

Filtering things. A new life awaits.

August 2023. First post from the channel: "Filtering things. Some will be mailed, some will be thrown away. A new life awaits us very soon." That was it. No manifesto, no dramatic statement. We were packing up what fit in a backpack and leaving the rest.

We left Russia for Georgia in early 2022. Georgia gave us time to breathe after Russia, meet people, think through a plan. It was difficult — I'd never left Russia before, culture shock hit hard, work was unstable. But it was necessary decompression.

September 3rd, 2023. Georgia → Istanbul → Mexico. The one route available to us.

Monterrey, 80 days

We landed in Monterrey, Mexico. First time on another continent. First time seeing a 7-Eleven, a ceiling fan, a Ford F-150 (seriously, why is it so wide), road markings that make no sense. I was genuinely amazed at everything, which sounds funny in retrospect given what came next.

Mexico gave us the point of no return. We waited 80 days for a CBP One appointment — the US government's app to request asylum port-of-entry crossing. November 10th, 2023: appointment confirmed. Calexico, November 29th.

"It took 67 days in total to get the date. The most boring and time-consuming part is finally over. Unfortunately, almost 100% probability we will be detained as soon as we make a step onto U.S. soil. Perhaps two weeks, perhaps twice as long."

We shipped most of our stuff to Portland in advance. Packed down to two backpacks. Bought the tickets to Mexicali. On November 23rd, Thanksgiving Day, we said goodbye to Monterrey. On the 27th, I posted the last long post from Mexico — in English and in Russian, for the people still in Russia following along. The day after: That's it, we're off.

The border. Detention.

November 29th, 2023. 3 km by taxi to the Calexico port of entry. We walked forward.

We were detained immediately, as expected. A scheduled post went live December 1st: "If you see this message, then most likely we have been detained. Entering radio silence mode." Our friend Curtiss took over, posting updates from outside while we were inside.

The detention process is: wait, wait, credible fear interview, wait, result, wait, release. It takes as long as it takes. Ours took about three weeks. The interview was nerve-wracking. The wait for results was worse.

December 20th: positive credible fear result. For both of us. I was released that evening, bought a ticket from San Diego to Portland, flew out the next day. Evan (the Rat) stayed behind — he was released January 2nd. I'll never forget that message: "I'M FREEEEE 🐀"

Portland

December 21st, 2023. Portland. I'd never been here. We'd been drawn to it by coincidence after coincidence throughout the whole journey — running joke about a CIA conspiracy. Turns out the city actually wanted us.

The first months were bureaucratic hell. No SSN, no work permit, no ability to lease anything. Temporary IDs, cash only, unofficial work. Oregon moved faster than most states — bank account opened with a temporary ID, state benefits processing started quickly, court moved to Portland. But the federal stuff dragged, as it always does.

January 23rd, 2024: Oregon ID arrived. Bank account opened. First dollar earned on a local farm. First beer we bought ourselves. Small things that felt enormous.

By May 2024: work permit denied. By May 22nd: "Work permit denied. Switching to saving 'I'm a person who doesn't eat or drink' mode until October."

We kept moving anyway.

The Friends

June 2024. Our friends — Curtiss, Marty, and Leo — crossed the US border. Same route, same process. They ended up in Mississippi, Adams County Correctional Center. We spent months coordinating with them by phone, managing their cases from outside, translating documents, writing declarations, navigating a system that does everything it can to exhaust you into giving up.

November 7th, 2024: Leo won his asylum case in court. November 27th: Marty won his. December 5th: DHS appealed both. Standard delay tactic — no logic, no accountability, just bureaucratic sandpaper. December 21st: Leo and Marty finally released after DHS dropped the appeal.

October 2024, in between all of this: we both got jobs at Amazon. Bought our first car. Started stacking shifts to dig out of debt. The Amazon night shift grind is its own kind of time distortion — you stop existing in normal human time. You function between shifts.

December 31st, 2024: we moved into an apartment in Downtown Portland, Goose Hollow. The neighborhood where this whole Portland chapter started. New year, actual address, real home.

Curtiss

Curtiss's case has been different. Longer, harder, and still ongoing.

His individual hearing happened July 2025. The judge — known across every advocacy chat as a disaster — didn't read his declaration, misrepresented facts, and took the case "under advisement." August 2025: denied. BIA appeal filed. The community rallied — fundraiser hit $1,000+ in hours, fee waiver was approved, appeal submitted August 21st.

February 2026: BIA denied. The reasoning: credibility issues — selectively picking apart specific phrases while ignoring the full record, ignoring that Russia persecutes LGBTQ+ people and political opponents. A technical, formalistic outcome that says nothing about the reality of what awaits him there.

The 5th Circuit accepted the appeal. The Supreme Court petition was filed. Emergency stay of deportation was denied. As of March 2026, we are at the edge of what domestic courts can do.

"Curtis has been in detention for nearly two years. Real LGBT case. Real political persecution. The European Court of Human Rights already ruled that Russia violated his rights. He protested. He spoke out against the war. He's openly gay. If he gets on that plane, none of that becomes less true — it just becomes someone else's problem."

Lawyers in Russia and the US are prepared to act immediately if the worst happens. There are contingency options. The people working this case aren't without a plan B. But we shouldn't need one.

Three years in the in-between

May 2025 post, three years after leaving Russia:

"America's changed us. Gave us some things, took away a lot more. Mostly took. It swapped one kind of madness for another. A different flavor of exhaustion, now with more capitalism. We're growing, technically. We're preparing for court, technically. We're 'building a future,' whatever the hell that means — and your weekend is Wednesday morning after packing overnight mystery boxes."

Evan and I are still undocumented, still working nights, still waiting. Our case is crawling through immigration court. The lawyer is good, the case is solid, the timeline is absurd. We have our apartment, our routines, our Portland. We're building something here even when the ground keeps shifting.

Curtiss is still in detention. We feed him books, top up his phone account, forward messages. He's steady. He jokes about the system with everyone who's still waiting for their hearing — which is darkly funny in a way only people inside that process understand.

The channel

Everything above is compressed. The real thing — the actual posts, the photos from Monterrey, the detention updates, the fundraiser moments, the 3am dispatches from Amazon shifts — is all still there.

Road to Freedom — t.me/rtf_blog

We're still standing. That's enough for now.