Family detained in push by feds
By Nancy Lofholm, Denver Post Staff Writer

Denver Post, CO
Nov 14 2004

The four Armenians awaiting deportation in a Denver detention facility
are there partly because of a 1 1/2-year-old crackdown on immigration
scofflaws.

A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said an estimated
350,000 to 400,000 illegal immigrants with deportation orders have
vanished before they could be sent out of the country so immigration
officials are being more aggressive to lower that rate and ease
concern in Congress.

The Sargsyan family is not included in those numbers because the
family members showed up at the appointed time on Oct. 4 in response
to a deportation notice. They were instantly taken into custody.

Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for the immigration enforcement division,
said the fact the family never tried to hide from immigration
authorities makes no difference.

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“The noncompliance rate among those not detained is very high, as high
as 80 percent,” Kice said. “That’s a very discouraging statistic and
one we are trying to change.”

The Sargsyans are being held in detention while their attorney
attempts to obtain visas for them under a relatively new law that
gives protection to victims of human trafficking. The Sargsyans
maintain they were victimized by an American con man who married
into the family and used that connection to defraud other Armenians
by promising them visas that he never obtained.

The Sargsyans initially attempted but failed to gain asylum on the
grounds they fear being harmed or killed on their return to Armenia.
The trafficking-victim visas they are now trying to obtain have been
granted in fewer than several hundred cases since they were established
in 2001.

Normally, immigrants with applications for those visas are not detained
and, instead, are given government aid. Kice said the Sargsyans are
being treated differently because they already had final deportation
orders before they applied for the trafficking victim visas.