Las Vegas Sun
April 4 2009

A family’s reprieve from fear

Mother who’s seeking legal status freed from jail, but still could be deported

By Timothy Pratt
Sat, Apr 4, 2009 (2 a.m.)

When Emma Sarkisian heard her mother’s voice tight with panic in a
call from the North Las Vegas jail last week, she flashed back to her
own calls from a different jail four years ago.

She too was told to pack her bags, along with her younger sister,
Mariam, apparently to board a plane for Armenia, a country that didn’t
even exist when Emma was born in 1986. She also called her family in
fear. In the end, both sisters were saved from deportation by a highly
unusual, last-minute phone call from Sen. Harry Reid to the secretary
of Homeland Security.

But Emma hadn’t heard of any such drama this time; her mother, Anoush,
was on the other end of the line saying she was being taken
somewhere. Could it be a waiting plane?

Within a couple of hours, the two were wetting each other’s cheeks
with tears of relief, locked in embrace on the sidewalk in front of
the Las Vegas Immigration and Customs Enforcement office.

After the mother of five had spent nearly two months in jail,
including being chained to a hospital bed for four days, the federal
government set her free March 26 under an `order of supervision,’
according to her attorney, Arsen V. Baziyants.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman would not comment
on the case, other than to say that Anoush, like Emma and Mariam, must
report for regularly scheduled visits to Las Vegas immigration
officials ‘ and that the agency would continue to seek to deport the
woman, who lacks travel documents.

The events again draw the Sarkisian family into the news, offering an
example of the situation facing an estimated 2 million families in the
United States.

Some members of those families were born here ‘ as were three of the
Sarkisian sisters, Patricia, 15; Elizabeth, 16; and Michelle,
17. Others become citizens over time, as did Rouben Sarkisian, the
father of the girls, divorced from Anoush since 1999 but still in
contact with his daughters. Some remain in limbo, such as Emma, now
22, and her sister Mariam, 21, who wait while Rouben’s application for
their citizenship winds its way through the system. Still others find
no legal recourse; the only thing keeping them from being deported is
that the federal government can’t find them.

With an increased emphasis on enforcement, both at workplaces and in
neighborhoods, more of those people, like Anoush Sarkisian, are being
found and deported. As a result, more families are split apart.

Those who advocate fixing the immigration system by offering pathways
to legalization for millions, along with increased border security,
are increasingly pointing to the effect of deportations on millions of
U.S.-born children. They say communities across the United States are
better served by keeping families together.

Federal officials got to the Sarkisian family this time after
discovering that Anoush was giving a deposition in an auto accident
lawsuit. On Feb. 2, outside a law office, several Immigration and
Customs Enforcement agents ordered Sarkisian out of her car and into
handcuffs, in front of Emma, who looked on, stunned.

Emma and Mariam had been detained in a similar fashion four years
earlier, teenage workers in their father’s suburban strip mall
pizzeria suddenly catapulted into the glare of national media
attention.

Their story began years earlier, however. Rouben Sarkisian had come to
the United States with Anoush in the early 1990s. They had three
daughters together. He divorced Anoush and remarried a U.S. citizen,
entering a path to citizenship. Anoush sought political asylum from
the U.S. government, a case that took nearly six years, finishing with
her losing an appeal. The government ordered her deported in 1999. She
stayed, unwilling to leave her daughters.

Rouben shared the job of raising them. He thought the girls were due
to become citizens, but ICE agents arrested them in January 2005 and
sent them to a cell in Los Angeles.

After several weeks of dramatic back-and-forth, Reid’s call to the
homeland security chief saved them. The federal government exercised
its discretion to offer what’s known as humanitarian relief. Rouben
has finally become a U.S. citizen and petitioned for his older
daughters to do the same. But that will take years, and until then,
the daughters can’t petition for their mother. Neither can Rouben,
because they are divorced.

The eldest of the U.S.-born daughters, Michelle, could petition for
Anoush to become a citizen, but only after she turns 21 ‘ in four
years.

Baziyants, Anoush’s attorney, is hoping to obtain legal status for her
under an immigration law meant in part for people from former Soviet
republics. He says attorneys incorrectly advised her more than a
decade ago that she wasn’t eligible for help under this law.

For now, he says, the government made the correct decision releasing
Anoush from jail, where she received inadequate medical attention for
her diabetes, migraines and stomach disorders. A week before she was
released, detention center officials took her to North Vista Hospital,
where she remained chained to a bed for four days, refusing to sign
papers consenting to an operation on her heart, he says. During that
time, neither he or the family could obtain information regarding her
whereabouts. Sarkisian’s stay also included repeated attempts, some at
3 a.m., to make her sign papers giving the Armenian government
permission to grant her travel documents, the attorney says.

Baziyants adds that the Senate majority leader’s office also helped
obtain Anoush’s release. A spokesman for Reid wouldn’t comment on the
case, however.

People following the story of the Sarkisians have said the federal
government should deport Anoush just as all orders of deportation
should be acted on.

But Baziyants says the case is not cut and dry, and neither are many
others. `The point isn’t whether we should open the floodgates and let
everyone into the country,’ he said. `The point is, are the rules as
they are now really balanced? Do they reflect who we are as a country?
Do we tear apart all these families, or take a closer look?’

Meanwhile, last Friday night at the Sarkisian house in Las Vegas,
everyone ate kashlama for the first time in nearly two months; Anoush
is the only one in the family who can prepare the Armenian
meat-and-potatoes dish.

Michelle, a senior at Palo Verde High, was relieved. While her mother
was gone, she didn’t sleep well and let her grades slip to C’s.

`There was so much stress,’ she says. `The house was a depressing
place. Now I can rest.’

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