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TIJUANA, MEXICO As the sun rose over the San Ysidro port of entry Thursday, Mikhail lay curled over his wife, donated blankets covering them and their makeshift cot. An arms length from where the Russian couple slept, coils of barbed wire hung low, a reminder that they are not currently welcome on the U.S. side of the border.

Mikhail had left Russia in a hurry, two days after the country of his fathers birth invaded the country of his mothers. He had been living on borrowed time since 2014, when he ripped up his conscription notice refusing to fight in the war against Crimea. If he was ever caught, he said, it would mean a 15-year prison term.

I will never fight a war where I can kill innocent people, people who might be my cousins, my aunts, Mikhail said in Russian. Its all just wrong.

Mikhail and his wife Natasha are part of a group of Russians, 19 adults and five children, camped out at the San Ysidro border gate, hoping to be allowed into the United States to stake claims of asylum.

Thousands more Russians traveled to this part of the border before the invasion, an exodus that began after the imprisonment of a popular opposition leader last year. They are able to fly into the Central American country without visas, making this leg of the journey simpler than it is for most migrants who arrive here seeking asylum. But once here, they join a migrant crisis that has only grown more complex since former President Trump closed the border to asylum seekers because of the pandemic.

The Chronicle is identifying migrants by their first names, as all expressed fear of retaliation if they were returned to Russia.

Kristina, a Ukrainian refugee and former nail salon owner from Kiev, who has been denied entry to the U.S. three times, pleads with a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer to reconsider. She said she feels so tired of all this, two weeks of this back and forth. I feel empty. There is no country to go back to in Ukraine. Photographed at the San Ysidro port of entry in Tijuana, Mexico on Thursday, March 17, 2022.

Mikhail has a cousin in Cupertino. His goal is to make it to her home, and from there, start to rebuild the life he suddenly abandoned in Russia.

Yet Mikhails Russian passport is as big a problem as Title 42, a Trump-era policy the Biden administration continues to enforce, which cites the COVID-19 pandemic as a basis for the rapid expulsion of migrants and has effectively shut the border to asylum seekers.

On Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas told reporters that Border Patrol agents were reminded they have some leeway with regard to enforcing Title 42, particularly when it comes to those fleeing the crisis in Ukraine, BuzzFeed News reported.

This was policy guidance that reminded (border officers) of those individualized determinations and their applicability to Ukrainian nationals as they apply to everyone else, the online news outlet quoted Mayorkas as telling reporters.

This follows a March 11 Department of Homeland Security memo informing U.S. Customs and Border Protection that the agency can, on a case-by-case basis, let those with valid Ukrainian documents bypass Title 42 restrictions that would otherwise keep them from crossing the border because of the unjustified war of aggression in Ukraine and the humanitarian crisis its caused.

DHS didnt immediately respond to questions about whether its discretionary guidance could be applied to Russian migrants who oppose their government's war and fear what may happen if theyre forced to return.

When Russias latest war began, Mikhail, a photographer and designer, shuttered his familys printing press in the lakeside town of Pereslavl-Zalessky and joined thousands of others who have reportedly fled Russia, fiercely opposed to their governments war in Ukraine.

As it is for many, the war is personal for Mikhail. While he grew up in Russia, he feels equally Ukrainian, having spent his life visiting his mothers siblings and their children there. Now his little cousins are refugees in Poland, their fathers still at home, part of the Ukrainian resistance.

As Mikhail began what has become his morning ritual folding his blankets and neatly stacking them on a picnic chair, followed by some calisthenics a handful of Ukrainian families presented their blue passports to border officials and walked into San Diego.

The 35-year-old said he didnt begrudge border authorities decision to let them cross, but wondered if he and his wife will get the same chance. Despite being a son of both nations, he and Natasha have only Russian passports.

Tell me what should I/we do? Mikhail asked in a translated text to The Chronicle Wednesday evening. What should the people who came here and they are against the war, they are against Putin and his regime, (do)?

Some residents of Tijuana who walked across the border headed to work or school in San Diego, eyed the group of white migrants, remarking in Spanish that they were being treated better than the darker-skinned migrants they usually encounter here.

Its a reality not lost on Julia, a 26-year-old Russian IT worker who fled her St. Petersburg home the day Russian President Vladimir Putin began waging war. Thursday was her fourth day at the border gate.

She said she realized other migrants before her have been cleared out from the small patch of concrete that she and her fellow Russians currently occupy. Maybe it's because we're Europeans, Julia said. That's not fair, I think.

Yet here she stays, sleeping on nothing more than a couple of blankets, far from her life in St. Petersburg.

Julia said the group shes with has refused offers of shelter from Mexican officials because of their homegrown distrust of government. Interacting with the authorities in Russia (during) your life (leaves) the most insecure feeling, so here (the Russian migrants) are just afraid, she said. If they leave the border gate, she suggested, maybe they wont be allowed back.

Russian refugees wait at the U.S.-Mexico border outside the San Ysidro port of entry in Tijuana on Wednesday, March 16, 2022.

Julia and her husband, Anton, 27, an American literature Ph.D. candidate and English teacher, were active protesters last year when Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was imprisoned. Police cracked down hard. The couple escaped arrest, but others were not so lucky.

I feel this guilt because I couldn't do anything and they were beating the people who were protesting with us, Julia said.

The day before Russia invaded Ukraine was a normal one for the couple. Julia attended a yoga class and stopped by the bakery. When she arrived at the apartment, Anton said he believed that their president was about to attack Ukraine.

They left Russia the next morning.

Julia feared Anton would get conscripted to serve. I don't want him to participate in this (war) because it's a crime, she said.

So they wait at the U.S.-Mexico border, passing time below the spirals of barbed wire. The only English-speakers of the group, they keep busy translating for their fellow Russians. Anton speaks fluent Spanish as well, so he translates when Mexican officials or volunteers come by with food and offers of shelter.

Anton says he thinks often of family and friends he left behind. They connect by WhatsApp constantly. He hopes the Biden administration will begin to recognize dissident Russians like him and his wife, stalled at the fourth busiest land border in the world, as refugees in need of a home.

Of the home he left, he said, I think the most common sentiment in Russia is just fear.

Deepa Fernandes is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: deepa.fernandes@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @deepafern

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They protested Putin and fled their country. Now, Russians opposed to the war can't get across the U.S. border - San Francisco Chronicle