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Authorities To Mother Of Five: You're Being Deported Monday

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  • Authorities To Mother Of Five: You're Being Deported Monday

    AUTHORITIES TO MOTHER OF FIVE: YOU'RE BEING DEPORTED MONDAY
    By Timothy Pratt

    Las Vegas Sun
    http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/jul/03/au 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."
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