AUTHORITIES TO MOTHER OF FIVE: YOU’RE BEING DEPORTED MONDAY
By Timothy Pratt
Las Vegas Sun
thorities-mother-five-youre-being-deported-monda/
Fri, Jul 3, 2009 (2 a.m.)
Ill woman could take her daughters to Armenia – or face separation
Anoush Sarkisian, 50, who faces deportation next week, rests Thursday
at St. Rose Dominican Hospital’s San Martin Campus after being admitted
with heart problems.
Anoush Sarkisian is not in the mood for celebrating Independence Day
this year, nearly two decades after first touching U.S. soil.
This Fourth of July is scheduled to be the last in Las Vegas for
the 50-year-old mother of five girls. Authorities plan to deport
her Monday.
Sarkisian discovered this last week when she showed up for her monthly
visit to local immigration authorities, and an official handed her what
attorneys call a "bag and baggage" letter. It dryly informed her that
"arrangements will be made for your departure to Armenia" on July 6.
It looks like the end of nearly five years of back-and-forth between
the Las Vegas family and the federal government. The outcome will
either separate Sarkisian from her daughters, three of whom are under
age 18 and born in the United States, or force the girls to build a
new life in a land they know next to nothing about, and whose language
they neither speak well nor write. It’s also a country that didn’t
exist when Sarkisian came to the United States. When she left her
homeland, it was part of the Soviet Union.
The family’s U.S. immigration case has involved the highest-ranking
U.S. senator; a diocese with 45 parishes in 13 states; officials in
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement; local and Los Angeles jails,
courts and lawyers; local and national news media; and of course,
the government of Armenia.
In January 2005, immigration officials attempted to deport Anoush’s two
eldest daughters, Emma, then 18, and Mariam, then 17, to Armenia. After
the girls spent several weeks in an L.A. jail amid increasingly intense
media coverage, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid intervened at the last minute
to stop the order.
But the same outcry hasn’t accompanied attempts begun this year to
deport Anoush, and Armenia recently agreed to accept her, though she
isn’t really a citizen of that country, either.
Immigration officials say they are just carrying out an order of
deportation. An appeal of that order sits unanswered at the Board
of Immigration Appeals. On May 6, her attorney, Arsen V. Baziyants,
filed a formal request to reopen the case.
Federal officials caught up with Anoush this year when they discovered
she was giving a deposition in an auto accident lawsuit. Several
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents surprised her outside a
law office on Feb. 2, ordering her out of her car and into handcuffs
in front of Emma, now 22.
Nearly two months in a jail cell followed, including, she said,
four days chained to a hospital bed. Anoush suffers from diabetes,
migraines and heart problems. The federal government released her
March 26 under an "order of supervision," meaning she had to report
regularly to immigration officials in Las Vegas.
Emma and Mariam have been under the same order since their detention
four years ago, when they were teens working in their father’s suburban
strip mall pizzeria. Their arrests and the family’s pleas for help
placed them under the glare of national media attention and in the
debate over immigration law.
The family’s mixture of immigration statuses dates to the early 1990s,
when Rouben Sarkisian came to the U.S. with Anoush. They had three
daughters together. He divorced Anoush and remarried a U.S. citizen,
which put him on a path to citizenship. Anoush sought political
asylum from the U.S. government, but after nearly nine years lost her
case. The government ordered her deported in 1999, but she thought
the case was under appeal until 2003, when she sought legal counsel
and discovered that her former attorney had never pursued an appeal.
Rouben has become a U.S. citizen and petitioned for Emma’s and
Mariam’s citizenship. But that will take years. The daughters won’t
be able to file similar petitions for their mother until they are
citizens themselves. The eldest U.S.-born daughter, Michelle, can’t
petition for her mother to become a citizen until she turns 21 – in
four years. Rouben can’t petition for Anoush because they are divorced.
Baziyants, Anoush’s attorney, filed his recent appeal with the Board
of Immigration Appeals invoking a law meant, in part, for people from
former Soviet republics. Attorneys incorrectly advised her more than
a decade ago that she wasn’t eligible for help under this law.
As for the appeal, the board told Baziyants that rulings aren’t made
quickly on appeals unless a person is detained. So only bringing
Anoush to authorities on July 6 would force the board to make an
emergency decision, an official told the lawyer.
A pending appeal "does not, however, preclude removal," Pat Reilly,
a spokeswoman for ICE, noted in an e-mail to the Sun.
Harout Markarian, executive director of the Western Diocese of the
Armenian Church, is not optimistic. The diocese, with 500,000 followers
in the Los Angeles area alone, pleaded this year with Sen. Reid’s staff
to consider the humanitarian issues involved in separating the family.
But now, Markarian said, "We’ve been in touch with prominent
immigration lawyers and judges … and it seems that immigration
authorities have cut off all avenues."
Markarian receives calls from the eldest Sarkisian daughters daily,
finding them in tears.
On Wednesday, Emma accompanied Anoush to a doctor, trying to understand
the medical implications of putting her mother through the stress and
strain of being deported. The family hoped authorities would take this
into consideration. The doctor found her short of breath and ordered
her admitted to a hospital. On Thursday afternoon, a cardiologist
had ordered an echocardiogram and results of an earlier stress test.
Emma was beside herself and red-eyed. This should be a weekend for
Armenian shish kebabs and American fireworks in the family’s back
yard. Normally it’s a double affair, because her sister Elizabeth’s
birthday is the 5th. She turns 17 on Sunday.
This year, Emma said, "nobody feels like celebrating."