Volodymyr Dudnyk was picked up by Ukrainian military draft officers almost immediately after crossing the border into Ukraine following his deportation from the United States. He was sent straight to a training center.

“When I was on the plane to Ukraine, I knew what was coming. But I hoped that perhaps they’d at least let me go home first. Everything happened even faster than I’d thought. I never made it home; I haven’t seen my parents yet,” the 28-year-old told CNN.

Dudnyk spent 51 days in boot camp, then a few weeks training as a drone operator. He is now fighting on the frontline in eastern Ukraine, where his fellow soldiers gave him a new military callsign: “America.”

In President Donald Trump’s second term, the United States has cracked down on every form of immigration and embarked on a mass deportation campaign. While the Trump administration says it is focused primarily on major criminals that it calls “the worst of the worst,” many of those detained have committed only minor offenses or have no criminal records.

This has brought deep uncertainty to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who are now at risk of being removed from the US. But for Ukrainian men of fighting age, there is an added risk. Deportation could lead straight to the front lines.

More than four years of war have left Ukraine’s military struggling with serious manpower shortages. Under Ukrainian law, all men between the ages of 25 and 60 are subject to mobilization. According to Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, some 2 million are currently “wanted” for avoiding the draft and about 200,000 soldiers are absent without official leave.

Many of those men have either fled the country or are trying to hide from draft officers who are constantly looking for evaders. CNN has witnessed firsthand draft officers conducting random document checks and taking anyone without a valid exemption straight to military training grounds.

A planeload of military-age men being deported from the US is low-hanging fruit for the draft officers.

Dudnyk, a tattoo artist, was one of 45 Ukrainian men who were deported from the US by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on November 17, alongside five women.

The group was flown to Poland and transported to the Ukrainian border by US officials who then handed them over to Polish officials who escorted them across the border. One of the people on the flight said they were handcuffed until after crossing the border.

The State Border Service of Ukraine told CNN that of the 45 men, 24 were “wanted” for the draft and were handed to police officers who then took them to the military draft office. In Ukraine, “wanted” status applies to those who have failed to update their data or who have violated mobilization rules.

“A man who was on the plane with me had two or three children, and he was deported too. Another was a 36-year-old who came to America as a child 20 years ago. He hardly speaks any Ukrainian. He was deported too,” Dudnyk said.

Dudnyk was picked up by ICE officers last August in front of a courthouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he was due to attend a hearing for allegedly driving without a license and car insurance. He acknowledged this wasn’t his first time getting into trouble in the US; he was in the past charged with offenses including driving under the influence, assault and burglary, he told CNN. Court documents show that he was only ever found guilty or pleaded guilty to traffic offenses and one count of disorderly conduct. All other charges were either dropped or dismissed in court.

On that hot August day, things were different. “They got out of the car; they already had my photo. … I never even saw the judge, as I was sent straight to detention. Even though I had official status there,” he said, adding that he had entered the US legally in 2019 on an exchange visa. He then obtained student visa, which was eventually canceled because, the US Department of Homeland Security told CNN, Dudnyk “failed to attend school.”

Dudnyk applied for asylum and was given permission to work while his case was pending. CNN has seen documents confirming his work permit and the fact that his asylum application had been received and was under consideration.

Asked by CNN for comment on his case, a DHS spokesperson said Dudnyk was a “criminal illegal alien from Ukraine” who had stayed in the US after his visa was canceled. “He received full due process,” the spokesperson added.

Dudnyk is one of many asylum applicants from multiple countries that the Trump administration has deported.

‘Enforcing the law’

Ukrainian couple Daryna and Zhenya, who asked CNN not to use their last names for fear of retribution, said they had entered the US legally in 2022 under the Uniting for Ukraine (U4U) program.

That Joe Biden-era scheme allowed private US citizens to sponsor Ukrainians who had fled their country because of the war and wanted to come to the US. They were given two years of humanitarian parole, allowing them to live and work in the US. After the initial two years were up, people could apply for an extension, known as re-parole.

When Daryna and Zhenya applied for re-parole in 2024, Daryna got hers almost immediately. But her husband did not. Instead, his application remained “pending” for more than a year – until he was arrested by ICE in November.

Julia Bikbova, an American-Ukrainian lawyer specializing in immigration and international law, said that this scenario – in which some members of a family are granted re-parole while others are not – is not unique.

Daryna told CNN the couple was trying to fight Zhenya’s deportation by arguing that he entered the US legally and still needed the country’s protection. Daryna said she was particularly worried that Zhenya, who is 34 – prime sign-up age from the point of view of Ukrainian draft officers – could be sent to fight on the frontlines despite having health issues. She said he has problems with his spine.

“The situation in Ukraine right now is that they are conscripting men even with the most severe disabilities,” she told CNN.

Her worries are not unfounded. Anton Smovzh, who was on the same deportation flight as Dudnyk and was similarly sent to a military training center straight after crossing the border from Poland, said the draft officers took everyone with “wanted” status, regardless of their situation.

“In the medical exam, they took my blood in three minutes and said I was fit for service,” he told CNN in Kyiv, where he is currently keeping a low profile after escaping from the military.

Smovzh, 34, told CNN that when he was deported from the US, his wife – also from Ukraine – and their son were effectively forced to leave as well. “My son is an American citizen, and de facto, he was deported too, because my wife cannot work with a small child, so they had to leave,” he told CNN.

Like Daryna and Zhenya, Smovzh entered Ukraine under the U4U program. He was detained and deported by ICE after being charged with rape and sexual assault – even though all charges against him were withdrawn shortly before his deportation, court documents show. It is not clear from the documents why the charges were withdrawn – the Philadelphia Police Department told CNN it cannot comment on cases that have been dismissed and the district attorney’s office did not respond to repeated requests for information. Speaking to CNN, Smovzh vehemently denied the allegations against him.

According to DHS, Zhenya agreed to leave the US voluntarily on March 15. CNN has not been able to reach him or Daryna since then.

Short-term solution

An estimated 280,000 Ukrainians entered the US under the U4U scheme before it was suspended in January 2025, alongside all other categorical humanitarian parole programs, as Trump took office.

The humanitarian parole system allows a person who would normally not be allowed to enter the US to request entry “based on urgent humanitarian reasons or a significant public benefit.”

This could be to receive life-saving medical treatment or visit a family member with a serious illness, to act as a witness in an important trial or to escape imminent danger. The granting of humanitarian parole is discretionary and receiving it does not give the parolee any legal immigration status. It is intended to be a short-term solution for an acute crisis.

“There was an expectation that the war would end and (the people who entered on U4U) would go back. The program was not designed to lead to a permanent residency or visa. It was meant to allow Ukrainians to sit out the war,” Bikbova said. But instead, the war has now entered its fifth year.

Officially, the U4U program has not been scrapped under the Trump administration. Instead, as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a DHS agency, announced it would stop accepting new applications and said that individual renewal requests would be granted only in the case of “continued urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”

“On paper, the protections for Ukrainians are still in place… but right now, ICE has the sweeping authority to pick up anybody,” Bikbova said, pointing to recent cases where federal law enforcement officers have arrested permanent residents and even US citizens.

The Trump administration also introduced a new $1,000 fee to be paid once re-parole is granted, on top of the nearly $600 application fee – amounts Bikbova said could be prohibitive.

A DHS spokesperson laid responsibility for the Trump administration’s deportations of Ukrainians to a country still at war at the door of the previous government.

“The Biden administration did a profound disservice to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing Russian invasion by exploiting humanitarian parole authority in ways it was never intended, turning a narrow, case-by-case emergency tool into a mass-admission program that left these vulnerable people in a precarious, temporary limbo with no path to lasting security,” the spokesperson said.

‘They said I was illegal’

Ruslan, 26, told CNN he was detained during a traffic stop and was not aware of having done anything wrong. “They just pulled up behind me and asked for my documents. I gave them my driver’s license, and they asked for my passport, which I had left at home. They said I was illegal, handcuffed me and took me to jail. And that was it. No one asked me anything,” he said.

Through his girlfriend, Ruslan quickly provided the authorities with his documents – the parole, which was valid for three more months, as well as a work permit. He asked CNN not to use his full name for privacy reasons.

“Everything as it should be. But that wasn’t enough… They cancelled my parole and all my documents that allowed me to stay in America,” he said, speaking to CNN from Poland.

The DHS spokesperson told CNN that Ruslan was “an illegal alien from Ukraine” who had entered the US in 2024 and was granted parole.

“Parole or a pending application does not grant a legal status,” the spokesperson said. According to the law, the DHS has the right to revoke parole at any time and without notice – and it did so in Ruslan’s case. No reason was given.

The Trump administration has gone even further when it comes to parole programs for people from countries like Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, seeking to revoke them completely. The Supreme Court sided with the administration on the issue in an emergency ruling last year.

Ruslan said he had decided against fighting deportation on his lawyer’s advice and, when he was given the option to leave the US voluntarily, he took it. Sitting in detention was proving costly, as Ruslan could not earn but still had to pay for the apartment he was renting with his Ukrainian partner Kateryna, also in the US on the U4U program. And by leaving voluntarily, he was able to avoid being sent to Ukraine, where he would be drafted, he said.

Kateryna said the couple loved living in New York. “I liked the ocean the most. I (worked at) a beauty salon in Brighton Beach and after work we always went to the ocean just to walk or drink coffee. We did this all the time. We sat on a bench or on the rocks by the ocean,” she said.

“I keep thinking – if they wanted people to leave, they could have said, for example, ‘We don’t want you here, U4U is closing down and here’s the deadline for departure.’ Then people would have left normally, instead of facing all this.” Kateryna added that she felt lucky they don’t have children after seeing entire families uprooted by detentions and deportations.

“I spoke to someone who had two or three children, very young children. And the man was simply taken away, leaving them without an income, without anything,” she said.

‘I’m not angry at Americans’

Smovzh was detained by ICE in June while out on bail over the charges of rape, sexual assault and indecent exposure that were later withdrawn.

A photograph showing that moment – Smovzh in handcuffs, flanked by masked officers – was published on the US Border Patrol’s official Instagram account. It inaccurately described him as being “wanted for rape, aggravated indecent assault, and reckless endangerment.” As of March, the photograph was still online. Smovzh was never convicted of any wrongdoing.

DHS told CNN that Smovzh “received full due process.”

He told CNN he was determined to return to the US, even though his deportation makes that option extremely unlikely. “For me, it’s a matter of principle to return to the US. I believe that I did nothing to deserve being deported,” he said.

“I’m not angry at Americans,” he added. “When I was in (detention) there were Ukrainians who had been in prison for 10 to 20 years. I understand why the country doesn’t want criminal immigrants. I wouldn’t want that either. But in my case, I was just unlucky.”

Dudnyk said that when his family and friends learned he was being deported to Ukraine, they suggested that he, like Smovzh, should try to run away from the military.

But that was not an option he would consider.

“While travelling here, I saw so many graves of soldiers. It really got to me,” he told CNN. “At that moment, I told myself that I wouldn’t go AWOL and would fight instead.” (CNN)

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