As a result of the serious economic crisis that rattled Ukraine in the 1990s, companies throughout the country shuttered, the unemployment rate shot up, and accordingly, the population became more impoverished. Transcarpathia was no exception. Having lost their jobs, most Magyars were forced to seek a livelihood by applying for low-profile and low-paid jobs like porters, janitors, and cleaners that could in no way satisfy the needs of traditionally large Magyar families. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that many Magyars lacked any kind of identity document required for employment. In these conditions of dire need and inability to find work in a small region, Magyar Roma frequently migrated to large cities to earn money. In the mid-1990s, they also ended up in Russia, specifically the outskirts of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, where small groups of them still live today in extreme need and poverty in makeshift homes in industrial zones and on abandoned lots. Some Magyar Roma have Ukrainian identity documents, but others have none at all (sometimes children’s passports and birth certificates are destroyed during police raids or in fires at settlements). In any case, almost all these people have “illegal” status in Russia, so they cannot rent housing, get an official registration, get a job, or take advantage of medical and social assistance, and their children never go to school. In Russia, children are not given any citizenship at birth; instead, maternity hospitals issue a “verification of birth,” which must then be submitted to a bureau of vital statistics to obtain a “certificate of birth.” In most cases, Magyar Roma do not apply for birth certificates. Aside from police abuse (extortion, threats, arson) and the risk of becoming the victim of neo-Nazis, Magyar Roma face the constant threat of prosecution for violation of migration rules and confinement in a foreign national detention center, which hold foreigners awaiting expulsion. In 2009, stateless persons Anna Lakatosh, Aladar Forkosh, and Pavel Gabor were detained by police officers in the settlement of Petro-Slavyanka, Leningrad Oblast, where they lived with other Roma migrants from Zakarpattia Oblast, Ukraine. All three were fined 2,000 rubles for violating residence rules in Russia and given an additional punishment of expulsion from Russia. They were placed in a remand center run by the Main Internal Affairs Directorate (at that time Russia did not have special detention centers for foreigner nationals who violate migration rules) until their sentence could be enforced. The detention conditions at the remand center were not intended for extended stays and the detention period could not exceed 15 days (the maximum penalty for administrative arrest). Thus, this remand center was not an institution specially designated to hold people subject to expulsion, but Lakatosh, Forkosh, and Gabor spent a total of one year and two months in the center’s extremely difficult conditions. Here is the testimony of Anna Lakatosh: My cell had a total area of 3m x 5m and was intended for four people. The cell walls were black, exposed, and grime flaked from the ceiling. The cell was like a dark stone bag. The floor was bare cement. Cold seeped in from the walls and the floor, so it was very cold, even in the summer. I was freezing. 6