Grand Junction Sentinel, CO
Nov 13 2004
Family buys time i n asylum attempt
By GARY HARMON
The Daily Sentinel
Four members of an Armenian family hoping to avoid deportation have
filed for visas as victims of trafficking, a move that forestalled
any immediate action to return them to their native country.
The four, however, remain in custody in a federal holding center in
Aurora, said a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau.
The four members of the Sargsyan family — Hayk, a senior at Ridgway
High School; his brother, Gevork, a chemical-engineering student at
the University of Colorado; their sister Meri; and father, Ruben —
were taken into custody last week after an immigration hearing in
Denver.
The eldest sister of the family, Nvart Indinyan, said she feared that
her brothers were due to be deported immediately because their
photographs had been taken while they have been in custody.
The applications for so-called “T visas” freezes the process until a
decision is made, said Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for Immigration and
Customs Enforcement.
Decisions on T visas are made out of the agency’s Vermont service
center, said Sharon Rummery of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services, another Homeland Security agency, and there is no deadline
for them to act.
T visas were established in 2000 for victims of human trafficking;
they allow victims to remain in the United States if they are deemed
to be in danger of extreme hardship or severe harm if they’re
returned to their home countries.
They also are expected to cooperate with investigations into the
trafficking that resulted in their arrival in the United States.
Victims of human trafficking may apply for permanent residency after
three years.
Indinyan said she feared her family would be harmed in Armenia by
people there who were defrauded by her ex-husband.
Other avenues for the Sargsyan family have been exhausted, Kice said.
They arrived in the United States on student visas and no longer have
the right to remain in the country, she said.
Taking the family members into custody was necessary, she said. There
are 350,000 to 400,000 people in the country who simply ignored their
final-removal orders, Kice said.
“It’s a serious problem,” she said.
The Sargsyan family’s popularity in Ouray County is admirable, but
not a factor in whether they should be allowed to remain, Kice said.
“This is not a popularity contest,” she said. “No one is above the
law. Everyone wants to see the law enforced, except when it comes to
someone they know.”
Other Armenians have waited a long time to get to the United States
by legal means, Kice said, and those cases also should be remembered,
she said.
Ridgway High School students planned to demonstrate today in Denver
in support of the their classmate and his family.