Denver Post, CO
Nov. 4, 2004

Procedures underway to deport Armenians

By Nancy Lofholm
Denver Post Staff Writer

Deportation proceedings will begin today for several Armenians who have
fought to remain in Ridgway, their adopted home on the Western Slope.

Four members of the Sargsyan family have received notices requiring
them to show up at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
detention center in Aurora, where they will be held until they can be
sent back to Armenia – a place where they say they face persecution.

Two others continue to fight deportation in separate cases.

The family’s members have waged a six-year legal battle to stay in the
U.S., where they have become valued members of the Ridgway and Ouray
communities.

The Sargsyans’ attorneys say they still hope to stop the deportation by
obtaining visas for foreigners who have been the victims of human
trafficking.

But immigration officials say the legal process has run its course.

“The bottom line … is that there is a final rule of order, and it’s
time for them to be going home now,” said Doug Maurer, Aurora field
office director for the immigration department.

The Sargsyans’ effort to be accepted in a new country began in 1994
when Nvart Sargsyan was 19. She married 53-year-old American Vaughn
Huckfeldt, who was working in the Armenian capital of Yerevan and was
purported to be a wealthy minister.

Huckfeldt brought Nvart to the U.S. when she was nearly nine months’
pregnant. She discovered he didn’t have a home, and said he began
abusing her. Several Ridgway residents said they witnessed that abuse,
but Huckfeldt was never convicted of a crime.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Sargsyan family were being threatened in
Armenia by people who the Sargsyans said gave Huckfeldt money to obtain
visas that never came through.

Huckfeldt, who reportedly is living in Germany and could not be
reached, eventually obtained student visas for the Sargsyans, and they
came to Ridgway early in 1999. They said they did not understand their
visas required them to attend school.

Nvart filed for divorce that year and Huckfeldt responded by notifying
immigration authorities that the family was in the country
fraudulently.

Since that time, the family has fought through a snarl of courts and
through tightened regulations under the Department of Homeland
Security.

Nvart remarried and, as the wife of an American citizen, is trying to
obtain a green card. Family matriarch Susan Sargsyan was not included
in today’s deportation ruling because she has not exhausted all of her
appeals.

Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for immigration and customs, said the
community support for the Sargsyans will not affect their deportation.

“The public need to understand that regardless of whether they have
made a contribution to the community they are not above the law,” she
said.