New York Times
Dec 13 2004
Deportation Case Riles Colorado Town
By KIRK JOHNSON
RIDGWAY, Colo., Dec. 8 – The Sargsyan family came from Armenia in the
1990’s already primed with many of the attributes that small-town
rural America respects. They worked hard, paid their bills on time,
learned English rapidly, excelled in school and were good-looking as
well, people here say.
In this mostly white ranching and retirement town of about 700
people near the Telluride ski resort, the Sargsyans also brought a
tincture of foreign exoticism that many residents found bracing.
“These are the kind of people you want as immigrants, the kind that
made this country great,” said Dr. Richard Engdahl, pastor of the
United Church of the San Juans, which meets in the local community
center.
But what happened next says as much about the town as it does about
the family. After the Sargsyans were threatened with deportation
earlier this year – they had entered the country on student visas and
gotten jobs instead, the government said – a kind of collective howl
went up here over what was perceived as a terrible injustice.
The anger filtered through the tiny Ridgway School, where Hayk
Sargsyan (pronounced sarg-SEE-yan) is a senior in the 17-member class
of 2005. And it erupted from Dr. Engdahl’s church, where Hayk’s
sister, Meri, is a pianist.
The Sargsyans were in trouble – Hayk, Meri and two other family
members were placed in detention in early November – and many people
said that was all they needed to know. Dr. Engdahl offered at least
half a dozen sermons on the subject.
Heidi Comstock, an assistant office manager at a medical clinic up
the road from Ridgway’s one traffic light, said, “This was an
opportunity to make a difference at a time when there’s a feeling of
helplessness on a lot of other levels about the world.”
A fund-raiser with Armenian food and a silent auction raised $15,000
for legal bills. Students began a letter-writing campaign to anyone
who might be able to help, from the county commission to the
Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Immigration and
Customs Enforcement bureau.
A seven-hour bus trip was organized to visit the four family members
who were being held at the immigration detention center near Denver,
and about a third of the town’s 150 middle and high school students
went. The student body president, Rachel Overton, 17, said the
experience taught her how to properly organize a protest rally.
[On Thursday, the family members in detention were released; they are
still awaiting the outcome of their case. A spokesman for Immigration
and Customs Enforcement said officials had decided that the Sargsyans
presented neither a risk of flight nor a threat to national security.
On Saturday, the town held a welcome-home reception at a park.]
But the effort to save one family has also exposed the town, people
here say, to some thorny questions and consequences. The family
patriarch, Ruben Sargsyan, 62, who had been a scientist in Armenia
working on optics for the Soviet space program, lost his job frying
doughnuts on the night shift at a local bakery after the furor
erupted, residents say.
And the uncertainty about the family’s permanent status has led some
people to say they fear a loss of innocence as a small town
accustomed to participatory democracy bumps up against a vast and
faceless bureaucracy. If a local official in Ridgway makes a
boneheaded decision, a resident can step up and say so the next time
they bump into each other at the True Grit Café, which is the closest
thing to a town nerve center. The Department of Homeland Security,
with its tens of thousands of employees of somber mandate to protect
the nation, does not lend itself to hands-on folksiness.
“People here still have this faith and belief that if we write the
right letter and reach the right politician, we can make a
difference,” said Susan Lacy, the secondary school principal at
Ridgway School. “I worry about the students becoming cynical too
soon,” she added.
Students like Rachel Plavidal, a 17-year-old classmate of Hayk, say
the government is simply wrong in prosecuting the Sargsyans.
“It’s definitely giving me a negative impression of the government,
that they could do this,” she said. “It just seems like the laws are
being compromised.”
Other people say the effort illuminates how little attention is paid
to other immigrants in the community, especially those from Mexico.
And most people admit that the support probably would not be so
universal if the family were Muslim. The Sargsyans are loved, many
people say, because they fit in so well, and they fit in because they
personified the shared values and ideals of the town.
“These people stood up and took part in this community, and let’s
face it, they have more in common, culturally, with this community
than a lot of the Hispanics,” said Rodney Fitzhugh, a lawyer who
practices in Ridgway and nearby Montrose and who represented a member
of the Sargsyan family, Nvart Idinyan, 30, in a divorce case a few
years ago.
Mr. Fitzhugh said that he supported the campaign for the family, but
that he also hoped it made people think about immigrants not as well
loved as the Sargsyans.
“I champion it in part because it might shed light on these other
cases,” he said.
The Ouray County sheriff, Dominic Mattivi Jr., said he thought the
Sargsyan case revealed the uneven enforcement of immigration law by
the government in small communities like Ridgway, where Hispanic
immigrants have become economic mainstays, especially in the
construction and tourism industries.
“Unless a Mexican commits a felony, they don’t want to hear about
it,” Sheriff Mattivi said of the immigration service.
And the rules are tough to enforce, he said, given the proximity and
porousness of the United States’ border with Mexico. One Mexican
resident who was recently convicted on a drug charge was deported,
Sheriff Mattivi said, but was back in town and at work just two weeks
later.
The family’s visa troubles began after Ms. Idinyan’s divorce, when
her ex-husband turned in the family to the authorities. Family
members say the ex-husband, a United States citizen who has since
left the country, was also the person who arranged the family’s
immigration, defrauding them in the process. He took money from the
Sargsyans and other Armenians, they say, for arranging student visas
that he falsely promised did not require enrollment in school.
The family’s lawyer, Jeff Joseph, has filed an application under a
visa program for victims of immigrant trafficking. Mr. Joseph said
the two boys, Hayk and Gevorg, who is a sophomore in chemical
engineering at the University of Colorado in Boulder, were legally
adopted before their 16th birthdays by Ms. Idinyan’s new husband, Max
Noland, who is a United States citizen, and that they should be
protected from deportation by that shield as well.
A spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Carl Rusnok,
said he could not comment on the outlook for the family’s case. He
said he thought the matter would be concluded within the next few
months.
Dr. Engdahl at the Church of the San Juans said the Sargsyan case was
bigger than one town or one family because of the questions it raised
about how security fears after Sept. 11 were changing the nation.
“The country once welcomed people like them, but if we’re not that
country any more, because we’re so concerned about being violated,
what does that do to the United States?” he said. “That’s the
question we should be asking.”